# What is the best Ernest Hemingway novel?

> Spare war elegies, sunbaked expatriate wanderings and posthumous curiosities all sit side by side. Which one is his best?

*By YPB Team · Published September 8, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-ernest-hemingway-novel*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Sun Also Rises** — score 1000/1000
   The 1926 debut that defined the Lost Generation through expatriates in Paris and Pamplona.
2. **To Have and Have Not** — score 787/1000
   The 1937 Depression-era story of a Key West boat captain drawn into smuggling.
3. **For Whom the Bell Tolls** — score 440/1000
   The 1940 Spanish Civil War epic following an American dynamiter behind enemy lines.
4. **Islands in the Stream** — score 440/1000
   The posthumous 1970 novel following a painter across the Gulf Stream and wartime Cuba.
5. **The Old Man and the Sea** — score 440/1000
   The 1952 tale of an aging Cuban fisherman's epic struggle with a marlin, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
6. **Across the River and into the Trees** — score 440/1000
   The 1950 novel about an aging American colonel's last days in Venice.
7. **The Torrents of Spring** — score 440/1000
   The 1926 satirical short novel parodying the style of Sherwood Anderson.
8. **The Garden of Eden** — score 323/1000
   The posthumous 1986 novel exploring a writer's marriage and shifting identities on the Riviera.
9. **A Farewell to Arms** — score 323/1000
   The 1929 World War I novel about an ambulance driver's doomed romance with a nurse.

Tags: usa, books, classics, ernest hemingway