A Farewell to Arms

By: Ernest Hemingway

Narrated by: John Slattery

The definitive edition of the classic World War I romance novel, featuring all of the alternate endings: “Fascinating…serves as an artifact of a bygone craft, with handwritten notes and long passages crossed out, giving readers a sense of an author’s process” (The New York Times).

Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable tragic story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse.

Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield frontlines—weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep.

Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. This edition collects all the alternative endings together for the first time, along with early drafts of other essential passages, offering new insight into Hemingway’s craft and creative process and the evolution of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Featuring Hemingway’s own 1948 introduction to an illustrated reissue of the novel, a personal foreword by the author’s son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the author’s grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of A Farewell to Arms is truly a celebration.

Not what I expected

John Slattery did an excellent job in narrating the book. I had read "The Modern Scholar: WW1" by John Ramsden and he Listed "A Farewell To Arms" on the reading list and said it covered the fighting between Italy and Austria in WWI. But I was disappointed because there was very little information about the war and was primarily a love story. I am not sure why Ramsden list this book on his reading list. I have enjoyed other Hemingway book so maybe my disappointment was in my expectations.

Easy listening

I liked the reader. He didn't drone me to sleep. It was very easy to listen along and he read at just the right pace. And his voice isn't obnoxious.

Great novel; spectacular narrator

To say the story is good seems a superfluous waste: I mean, it's Hemingway at his best. Duh.
What blew me away was the narrator. John Slattery nails it: American accents, English accents, Italian accents, males, females -- unreal. At times, it was difficult to believe this is all one person.

WWI Love Story

Narrator was excellent. HEMINGWAY'S classic profound metaphor of WWI told in narrators voice about his one true love, Kat.

Good until the end.

Great story until the end. The ending was greatly dragged out and boring, with much of it degrading the emotional ending.