Recommendations from our site
“We think of Hemingway as an American writer, but much of his writing is set outside of the United States, just as much of his life was set outside of the United States…A Moveable Feast takes place in Paris. It’s Hemingway’s memoir of the time he spent there with his first wife and it was stitched together by his last wife. It gives you the sense that he yearns for his first wife and the time when they were young together in France. Very often transnational literature is concerned with abrogating an implicit border of belonging. And very often it concerns the question: Does one have the right to be where one is or where one wishes to be? But in A Moveable Feast one never gets the sense that Hemingway questions whether he can or should be in Paris. There seem to be no visa issues or racial questions. Perhaps there is a sense of entitlement to the expatriate experience that the rest of transnational literature lacks. At the same time, it’s a book about a border that cannot be crossed—the border between past and present. Hemingway is reaching back into his past. It turns out even our most manly of writers can be wistful.” Read more...
The Best Transnational Literature
Mohsin Hamid, Novelist
“This is a memoir by Hemingway about his time in Paris, which includes sketches of people like F Scott Fitzgerald.” Read more...
The best books on Hemingway in Paris
Wai Chee Dimock, Literary Scholar
“The fact that Hemingway writes it as an old, rather bitter man trapped in his Idaho home with a bullying wife while he dreams of his youth in Paris with his first wife and child is so touching to me.” Read more...
Janine di Giovanni, Journalist
