It is the story of love and war that Hemingway had always contemplated writing, inspired by his experiences in 1918 on the Italian front, and in particular his wounding at Fossalta and his passion for nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. The themes of war, love and death, which in many ways underlie all of Hemingway's work, find a particular space and articulation in this novel. It is the story itself that stimulates emotions and feelings connected to the enchantments, but also to the extreme precariousness of existence, to revolt against violence and unjustly shed blood. The desertion of the young American officer during the retreat of Caporetto is revealed, with the reunion between the protagonist and the woman with whom he is in love, to be a decisive condemnation of what is inhuman about war. But even love, in this story marked by a tragic defeat of happiness, remains an aspiration that the man desperately pursues, a prisoner of mysterious forces against which it seems useless to struggle.