Introduction & Overview of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises Introduction

Ernest Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, remains, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "a romance and a guidebook." It also became, in the words of critic Sibbie O'Sullivan, "a modern-day courtesy book on how to behave in the waste land Europe had become after the Great War." The Sun Also Rises successfully portrays its characters as survivors of a "lost generation."' In addition, the novel was the most modern an American author had yet produced, and the ease with which it could be read endeared it to many. But for all its apparent simplicity, the novel's innovation lay in its ironic style that interjected complex themes without being didactic. Generally, the novel is considered to be Hemingway's most satisfying work.

The material for the novel resulted from a journey Hemingway made with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, and several friends to Pamplona, Spain, in 1925. Among...
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