English Pronunciation Audio

"Hemingway's farewell, mannered, thrilling, spoiled, pure, loyal to its monumental maker and itself and with no knowledge of coming darkness." —James Salter, The Washington Post Book World

A sensational bestseller when it appeared in 1986, The Garden of Eden is the uncompleted final novel of Ernest Hemingway, which he worked on intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1961. Set on the Cote d'Azur in the 1920s, it is the story of a young American writer, David Bourne, his glamorous wife, Catherine, and the dangerous, erotic game they play when they fall in love with the same woman.

"Hemingway gives you the look and feel of places, the sensuous brilliance of the world's offerings, the excitement of complex relationships, the precision of a hunt or a breakfast, the tensions of sexual intrigue - in short, The Garden of Eden is a feast." - Richard Stern, Chicago Tribune Books

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century, and for his efforts he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. Hemingway wrote in short, declarative sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Ernest Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. As part of the expatriate community in 1920s Paris, the former journalist and World War I ambulance driver began a career that lead to international fame. Hemingway was an aficionado of bullfighting and big-game hunting, and his main protagonists were always men and women of courage and conviction, who suffered unseen scars, both physical and emotional. He covered the Spanish Civil War, portraying it in fiction in his brilliant novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, and he subsequently covered World War II. His classic novella The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953.  He died in 1961.
 
ABOUT THE READER                                                           
Patrick Wilson has starred on Broadway in  Barefoot in the Park,  Oklahoma!. (Tony Award nominated), and The Full Monty, (Tony nomination, Drama League Award). His film credits include Little Children, Phantom of the Opera, Hard Candy, and the HBO Mini series Angels in America (Golden Gobe and Emmy nominations).