Under Kilimanjaro [Leather Bound]

Ernest Hemingway (Author), Robert W. Lewis (Editor), Robert E. Fleming (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2005

An American literary treasure

"The sun was not up but that was because of the flank of the mountain it had to rise over and the light was gray but good and Ngui and I were walking through the grass that was wet from the dew. He walked ahead because he knew where the bait had been hung and I watched the trees and his back and the trail his black legs made through the wetness of the grass. We walked silently and the cold wet of the new knee-high grass against my legs was cold and pleasant. Ngui carried the old Winchester pump gun and I carried the Springfield and the only noise that I heard from myself was the light slopping of the tea in my stomach."

--Under Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

Accompanied by his fourth wife Mary, famed American novelist Ernest Hemingway spent several months in late 1953 and early 1954 on his final safari in Kenya. Their time there came to an abrupt end in early January 1954 when they sustained serious injuries from two near-fatal plane crashes in east Africa. While recovering, and back home in Havana, Hemingway wrote his "African book," which is, by turns, an adventuresome, comedic, and thoughtful recounting of his final safari. In Under Kilimanjaro "Papa" colors real people and events with his lively imagination as he demonstrates his inimitable style, his deft wit, and his intelligent curiosity in this autobiographical novel about the land and people he came to love.

Completed in 1956, Under Kilimanjaro is part handwritten and part typed, with many of the pages heavily edited in Hemingway's hand. He then left this manuscript, along with those for A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, and The Garden of Eden, in a safe-deposit box in Cuba, often referring to them as his "life insurance" for his heirs.

Under Kilimanjaro is the last of Hemingway's manuscripts to be published in its entirety. Editors Robert W. Lewis and Robert E. Fleming believe that "this book deserves as complete and faithful a publication as possible without editorial distortion, speculation, or textually unsupported attempts at improvement. Our intent has been to produce a complete reading text of Ernest Hemingway's manuscript. . . .Working on it was both a privilege and a responsibility. . . .Readers of this remarkable work will experience the mingled pleasure of revisiting the familiar and discovering the new."

To its readers, Under Kilimanjaro reveals a mature, tender, happy, and reflective Hemingway and offers a compelling, deliberately paced, subtle story of a place and time as only Ernest Hemingway could write it.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Leather Bound: 456 pages
• Publisher: Kent State University Press (January 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873388704
• ISBN-13: 978-0873388702
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,572,865 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ernest Hemingway ranks as the most famous of twentieth-century American writers; like Mark Twain, Hemingway is one of those rare authors most people know about, whether they have read him or not. The difference is that Twain, with his white suit, ubiquitous cigar, and easy wit, survives in the public imagination as a basically, lovable figure, while the deeply imprinted image of Hemingway as rugged and macho has been much less universally admired, for all his fame. Hemingway has been regarded less as a writer dedicated to his craft than as a man of action who happened to be afflicted with genius. When he won the Nobel Prize in 1954, Time magazine reported the news under Heroes rather than Books and went on to describe the author as "a globe-trotting expert on bullfights, booze, women, wars, big game hunting, deep sea fishing, and courage." Hemingway did in fact address all those subjects in his books, and he acquired his expertise through well-reported acts of participation as well as of observation; by going to all the wars of his time, hunting and fishing for great beasts, marrying four times, occasionally getting into fistfights, drinking too much, and becoming, in the end, a worldwide celebrity recognizable for his signature beard and challenging physical pursuits.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How lucky we are to have another Hemingway book., September 16, 2005

By 

MLPlayfair (Ravenna, OH) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Under Kilimanjaro (Hardcover)

Hemingway. The very name means great writing. Alas, the man himself died, by his own hand, decades ago. No more great writing from him. But no! Fortune, my friends, has smiled on the book lover this day. It seems the great author squirreled away several manuscripts he wrote in the 1950s, and the Hemingway Foundation has just released the one he called "the African book." UNDER KILIMANJARO isn't just a book. It's an experience.

You'll have to forgive my gushing. I've spent the last few weeks hunting in Africa with "Papa" Hemingway and his fourth wife, Mary. That's what it felt like, too -- like I was out there on the plains of Kenya, sleeping in a tent at night with the roar of a lion rumbling through the dark air. The book's pace is deliberately slow, which gives the reader a sense of the timelessness of the camp by the plains under the great African mountain. So we listen in on the talk around the campfire and watch birds soar overhead almost in real time. When the hunt is on, we follow both the hunter and the hunted.

The book purports to be fiction, but it is every inch a memoir. Papa and Mary are, after all, the main characters. There are several levels to enjoy -- the pure literary quality, the exciting adventure, the enjoyable travelogue, the often humorous commentary. And it's a love story, but not what you'd expect; it's a tribute to his beloved Africa: "In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon and you have no more respect for it than for the lovely, perfect weed-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked salt plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But now it is there absolutely true, beautiful and believable."

In some of my favorite passages, he remembers his old writing pals, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound and others. He recalls how much he loved Paris in "the old days" and talks about Havana, Key West and the Spanish Civil War. These references pop up when you least expect them.

He goes from self-effacing to arrogant, sometimes in the same paragraph. His prose is at the same time gritty and elegant. Sometimes it's moving, sometimes it's funny, always it's fascinating.

The book itself has an introduction that explains the details of the posthumous publication. In back, the reader can find a glossary of Swahili terms, a list of characters and notes on the editing of the text. On the inside covers are reproductions of actual manuscript pages in Hemingway's own handwriting. Nina Smart has provided simple, almost iconic African drawings for each chapter heading.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another version of "True at First Light", June 28, 2007

By 

M. Barnett (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Under Kilimanjaro (Hardcover)

Readers should be aware that this "last" book by Hemingway is not really new. In essence, it is just another version of the previous "last" Hemingway title, "True at First Light," published in 1999. Both are based on the same unfinished manuscript, but edited by different people & put out by different publishers - "True at First Light" was edited by Hemingway's son Patrick and published by Scribner. Of the 2 accounts, "Under Kilimanjaro" is significantly longer, clocking in at over 100 pages more than "First Light."

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important, definitive polishing of Hemingway's final creation, December 5, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Under Kilimanjaro (Hardcover)

Under Kilimanjaro was Hemingway's last book and was an autobiographical novel about the country he knew and grew to love when he spent several months in Kenya between 1953 and 1954 - but it was completed in 1956 and is the last of his manuscripts to be published in its entirety. No definitive Hemingway collection could be without Under Kilimanjaro: co-editors Robert Lewis and Robert Fleming have aspired to produce a complete reading text of Hemingway's original and their work makes for an important, definitive polishing of Hemingway's final creation.