Across the River and into the Trees

First published in 1950, Across the River and into the Trees is Ernest Hemingway’s elegiac novel of love, memory, and mortality, set against the fading splendour of postwar Venice. Colonel Richard Cantwell, an ageing American army officer and veteran of two world wars, returns to the city where he once knew youth, ambition, and the exhilaration of being alive. Troubled by failing health and the accumulated disappointments of his military career, he finds an unexpected tenderness in his relationship with Renata, a young Venetian countess. Over the course of a brief visit, their conversations and encounters become intertwined with memories of war, old friendships, and the knowledge that certain things cannot be recovered.

Written after a decade in which Hemingway had published no new novel, the book marks a departure from the restless energy of his earlier fiction towards a more reflective meditation on the passage of time. Venice, with its winter light, quiet canals, grand hotels, and lingering traces of former glory, becomes a mirror of Cantwell’s own confrontation with age and loss. Although its publication divided critics, the novel offers an unusually intimate portrait of Hemingway’s preoccupations with courage, romantic devotion, and the burdens carried by those who survive war. Standing between For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, it reveals a writer turning increasingly towards the question of how a man might face the approaching end of his life with dignity.

From the book

“It made him feel as a wound does that you think you cannot bear. But you can bear anything, he thought.”

— Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees

On Across the River and into the Trees

“It is the saddest novel in the world about the saddest city.”

— Tennessee Williams, The New York Times