rederic Henry is an American Lieutenant serving in the ambulance corps of the Italian army during the First World War. While stationed in northern Italy, he falls in love with Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. Theirs is an intense, tender and passionate love affair overshadowed by the war. Ernest Hemingway spares nothing in his denunciation of the horrors of combat, yet vividly depicts the courage shown by so many.

In writing A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway was inspired by his own wartime experience as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. First published in 1929, the novel made his name and remains one of his finest works.