Ernest Hemingway served as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy in 1918, was wounded near Fossalta, and fell in love with his nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. She later broke off their relationship by letter. He spent the next decade processing what happened, and in 1929 published A Farewell to Arms — the great American novel about World War I.
It took him five years and forty-seven endings.
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What A Farewell to Arms Is About
Frederic Henry, an American officer with the Italian ambulance corps, is stationed in northern Italy in 1917. He is wounded by a mortar shell, transported to a hospital in Milan, and falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.
They have months together in Milan — the summer of 1917, while Henry recovers. Then he returns to the front. The Italian army begins its catastrophic retreat from Caporetto. Henry survives the retreat, escapes summary execution at the Tagliamento River, and makes his "separate peace" — deserting from a war he no longer believes in.
He finds Catherine again at Stresa. They row across Lake Maggiore to Switzerland in the rain. They are safe.
In Switzerland, Catherine becomes pregnant. The birth goes wrong. She dies. The baby dies. Henry walks back to the hotel in the rain.
How Long Is A Farewell to Arms?
| Reading speed | Time to finish |
|---|---|
| 200 WPM | ~6.2 hours |
| 250 WPM (average) | ~4.9 hours |
| 350 WPM (practised) | ~3.5 hours |
| 500 WPM (RSVP) | ~2.5 hours |
Reading Strategy
Book I (The Front) — establishment of character, the front, the wound. Use warpread's RSVP mode at 350–400 WPM. The Italy described here is vivid but the pace is patient.
Book II (Milan) — the romance and recovery. The most emotionally relaxed section of the novel. Read at 350 WPM; this is where Hemingway's tenderness is most visible.
Book III (Caporetto) — the retreat. One of the great sustained action sequences in war fiction. 400 WPM. The execution scene at the Tagliamento demands full attention.
Books IV–V — Switzerland, the birth, the ending. Slow down progressively. By the final five pages, read at 200 WPM. The ending earns the slowness.
Hemingway's prose in RSVP — short, declarative sentences work exceptionally well at pace. Don't slow down for simple sentences; they carry more at speed.
For the full speed reading technique, see how to read faster.
Where to Read A Farewell to Arms Free
- warpread library — instant reading, RSVP mode, no account needed
- Project Gutenberg — complete text, EPUB and download
- Standard Ebooks — best-formatted free EPUB
More Hemingway and WWI in the Library
- The Sun Also Rises — the Lost Generation after the war
- Mrs Dalloway — Woolf's parallel examination of post-WWI consciousness
- All Quiet on the Western Front — Remarque's German perspective on the same war
For the full list of free classics, see the 50 best free classic novels to read online.
Continue Reading
If you enjoyed this guide, here are the best next steps:
Read A Farewell to Arms free in warpread.app →
For tips on building reading speed with books like this, see How to Speed Read: 7 Proven Techniques — covering RSVP practice, subvocalisation reduction, and how to track your progress.
If you're looking for more books at a similar level, warpread's free library has 70+ public domain classics ready to read in your browser, organised by author, genre, and difficulty.
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