Green Hills of Africa: The Hemingway Library Edition

The most intimate and elaborately enhanced addition to the Hemingway Library series: Hemingway’s memoir of his safari across the Serengeti—presented with archival material from the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library, and with the never-before-published safari journal of Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.

First published in 1935, Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway’s lyrical account of his safari in the great game country of East Africa with his wife Pauline. Hemingway’s fascination with big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative narrative of his trip. In examining the poetic grace of the chase, and the ferocity of the kill, Hemingway looks inward, seeking to explain the lure of the hunt and the primal undercurrent that comes alive on the plains of Africa. Green Hills of Africa is also an impassioned portrait of the glory of the African landscape, and of the beauty of a wilderness that was, even then, being threatened by the incursions of man. Hemingway’s rich description of the land and his passion for hunting combine to give Green Hills of Africa the immediacy of a deeply felt individual experience that is the hallmark of the greatest travel writing.

This new Hemingway Library Edition offers a fresh perspective on Hemingway’s classic travelogue with a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, the author’s sole surviving son, who, himself, spent many years as a professional hunter in East Africa; a new introduction by Seán Hemingway, grandson of the author; and published for the first time in its entirety the African journal of Hemingway’s wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, which provides new insight into the experiences that shaped her husband’s craft.