Hemingway’s Havana: A Reflection of the Writer’s Life in Cuba

Ernest Hemingway lived in Cuba on and off for more than two decades, longer than anywhere else. He bought a home there—Finca Vigia—with his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, and wrote his masterpiece The Old Man and the Sea. In Cuba, Papa Hemingway found a sense of serenity and enrichment he couldn’t anywhere else. Now, through almost one hundred gorgeous color photographs and accompanying text, author Robert Wheeler brings us through the boulevards of Havana, to its cafes and gardens, and across the beaches that Hemingway fell in love with.

Wheeler has followed Hemingway’s path across three continents, from La Closerie des Lilas Café in Paris to Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West to El Floridita in Havana, seeking to capture through photography and the written word the essence of one of the greatest writers in the English language. Now, in Hemingway’s Havana, Wheeler reveals the beauty of Cuba, an island nation whose deep relationship with the sea came to fascinate and inspire the writer. Wheeler portrays the intimate connection Hemingway had with the land, the sea, the people, the culture, and the politics of Cuba.