For Whom the Bell Tolls

'The best fictional report of the Spanish Civil War that we possess' Anthony Burgess

In the Spanish Sierra, an American volunteer prepares to risk his life for a cause larger than himself.

Hemingway’s great novel of the Spanish Civil War.

High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting.

In the mountains he finds danger, discipline and the intense comradeship of war. He also meets Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco’s rebels, and whose presence brings love into a world shaped by violence.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a classic war novel about courage, ideology, loyalty, love and death. Written with Hemingway’s clarity and restraint, it turns a military operation into a profound test of what a person believes, what they will fight for and what they are prepared to lose.

Set during the Spanish Civil War, it remains one of Hemingway’s most powerful works of literary and historical fiction.

One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World


'A sparse, masculine, world-weary meditation on death, ideology and the savagery of war in general' Sunday Telegraph

'One of the greatest novels which our troubled age will produce' Observer