The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea is a novella by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, published in 1952. He wrote it between December 1950 and February 1951, and it was the last major work of fiction he published during his lifetime.

The book tells the story of Santiago, an aging fisherman, and his long struggle to catch a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana. Santiago has spent a very long time without a catch, and he takes his skiff out further than the other boats, where the fish takes hold of his line and holds him for days. The other central figure is a young boy, Manolin, who used to fish with him and whose parents have moved him to a luckier boat, and who continues to look after the old man regardless. Hemingway wrote the book in Cuba at a difficult point in his life, after his previous novel had been badly received, and it is written in a deliberately plain and narrow style compared with the long novels that came before it.

The book is short enough to be read in a single sitting and is built around one contest between one man and one fish.