Published in 1929, A Farewell to Arms provides an account of Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army during World War I. The novel primarily focuses on a love affair between Henry and an English nurse named Catherine Barkley as World War I rages around them. Hemingway places a number of biographical details into the novel: he himself was an ambulance driver on the Italian Front during the war, and he, too, fell in love with a nurse, although she left him for another man). Catherine's childbirth toward the end mirrors the experience Hemingway's wife had while giving birth to his child, as well (unlike in the novel, however, both his wife and child survive...
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