The short happy life of Francis Macomber

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and Other Stories presents Ernest Hemingway’s precise, restrained short fiction in English. The title story follows an affluent American couple and their professional safari guide during a big-game hunting expedition in Africa, where fear, courage, humiliation and marital tension become inseparable. Hemingway explores how people perform strength, judge one another and attempt to recover dignity under pressure.

This Penguin Modern Classics collection also gathers fifteen additional stories, including “The Capital of the World,” “A Way You’ll Never Be,” “A Day’s Wait” and “Fathers and Sons.” Together, the pieces display Hemingway’s characteristic economy, understated emotional force and interest in violence, memory, masculinity and moral uncertainty. A suitable edition for readers of twentieth-century American literature, classic short fiction and Hemingway’s spare narrative style.