A FAREWELL TO ARMS is one of Hemingway's earliest novels. With much of the material loosely based on his own personal experiences as an ambulance driver during World War I, the story captures in great detail the conflict in all of its horror and barbarism.

The book invites us to imagine all of the brave soldiers who went into the war in search of glory. What they found instead was the endless stalemate and hideous prospect of trench warfare. Perhaps more than any other war in the history of warfare, the first World War changed the traditional paradigms of how wars were fought and what the objectives of engagements were. Hemingway, who was there himself, serves as a perfect instrument to portray what it was really like.

This wonderful story by a young early Hemingway is perhaps, along with "For Whom The Bell Tolls", one of the finest anti-war novels ever written. In it we are introduced to a young and idealistic man, Frederick Henry, who, through love, experience and existential circumstance, comes to see the folly, waste, and irony of war, and attempts to make his own peace outside the confines of traditional conformity. For all of his obvious excesses, Hemingway was an artist compelled to delve deliberately into painful truths, and he attempted to do so with a style of writing that cut away all of the frills and artifice, so that at its heart this novel is meant as a exploration into what it means to confront the world of convention and deliberately decide to choose for what one feels in his heart as opposed to what one is expected to do. Of course, in so doing, the young ambulance driver becomes a full-grown adult, facing his trials with grace and courage. Still, what we are left with is a modern tragedy, one in which the characters must somehow attempt to resolve the irresolvable.