For Whom the Bell Tolls
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. There, in the mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels.
Stats for nerds
20recommend
50mentions
47people
2009–2026years
40% recommend54% neutral6% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Finished "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Hemmingway
Wow, so powerful. So real. I can see why it won the accolades at the time and why it stays. The ending. You could see it a mile away, but it was so hurtful still.
Would love to see another adaptation made of it, especially nowadays. Maybe a really long movie, 2 parts?
- I also used to read my commute but stopped it after I finished "for whom the bell tolls". I was so moved that I ended up crying in the bus and I would have liked to experience that feeling in the privacy of my home rather in the morning bus with 9 hours still on the clock.
- It's been so long since I've read this that I can't even remember the plot.
But I remember loving it as a teenager. I must go and reread it soon. That, and For whom the bell tolls, which I can remember slightly clearer.
- There are a number of famous english speaking authors that have done pretty good work around it.
On non fiction you have "The spanish civil war" by Thomas Hugh.
On the fiction side you have "For whom the bell tolls" by Ernst hemingway and "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell
- It's not a spy novel by any stretch but if you enjoyed TSWCIFTC you'll like For whom the bell tolls. The character portrayals are similarly ambiguous (among many other reasons to read that book)
- Not sure I agree. You, as with most critics actually, seem to be asserting there are clear "quality" lines to be drawn between great novels. IMO we're into the realm of subjectivity here and it's really up to the reader to decide what they like.
I didn't like Tender is the Night too much, and I love Hemingway's novels more than his stories (generally), chiefly The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Do I know better than you or do famous critics know better than me? I don't think so.
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