The Snows of Kilimanjaro (fiction)

Ernest Hemingway (1936)

THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a classic short story by the celebrated American writer Ernest Hemingway, first published in Esquire magazine in 1936 and included in most collections of his best stories. Harry is a writer who is dying of gangrene, stranded while on safari in Africa with his wife Helen, waiting for his likely death. Harry reviews his life, drinking and being irritable with Helen, contemplating his failure to reach his full potential as a writer and the time wasted with a marriage to a wealthy woman he doesn’t truly love. His mind flashes back to vivid memories of travels and childhood, and ultimately toward the unstoppable presence of death. He becomes aware of vultures circling and a hyena circling, and he dreams of a rescue plane taking him to the snow-covered top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Helen wakes up to an unresponsive Harry, and a hyena’s human sounding cry. It is a moving account of guilt and regret, and one of Hemingway’s best known works.

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OTHER A5 RECOMMENDED TRAVEL BOOKS - ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Ernest Hemingway is of course an amazing writer, known for his adventurous lifestyle, his love of bull fighting, and for several classics in American literature. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Click here to learn more about Ernest Hemingway.

GREAT QUOTES:

“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcas of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”
- Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro

"Because, just then, death had come and rested its head on the foot of the cot and he could smell its breath."
- Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro

INTERESTING FACTS AND LINKS:

The Snows of Kilimanjaro was adapted into a film in 1952, starring Gregory Peck. The film's ending is not the same as the story.
Despite being the highest mountain in Africa at 19,341 feet, no mountaineering skills are needed to reach the summit making this thrill accessible even for non-climbers. One of the best guidebooks is the Trailblazer Trekking Guide written by Henry Stedman.