Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon

The exotic and poetic beauty of the bullfight has captured the imagination of observers and readers for decades. No book has explained and disseminated this ancient art with as much power as Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. Since its publication in 1932, this classic study has shaped American notions of Spain and the Spanish art of bullfighting. Preceded by the short stories and novels that firmly established Hemingway as a master of modernist fiction, Death in the Afternoon is Hemingway's first volume of nonfiction prose, a medium which enables him to explore his life, his art, his times, and his wide-ranging interests.

Mandel's book engages and explicates all aspects of Death in the Afternoon. Her introductory essay provides important historical backgrounds and contemporary facts about the various elements of bullfighting---the bull, the bullbreeder, the bullfighter, the bullring, and the corrida itself--that Hemingway describes. The body of her book is devoted to detailed, definitive annotations of the several hundred persons, animals, events, and cultural artifacts that Hemingway included in his wide-ranging book. These alphabetically-arranged entries reveal Hemingway's views on painting, sculpture, architecture, sports, politics, economics, travel, music, food, drink, sex, language, and literature. Comprehensive endnotes, a multi-lingual bibliography, attractive illustrations, and an index complete the encyclopedic volume. It is an essential companion for all readers and teachers of Hemingway.