In my literature class we do some reseach in to our authors; can I say this guy, Ernest Hemingway, has lived through almost everything!
He was born in 1899. He was in WWI as an ambulance driver but he was seriously wounded so he came back to the United States. Then he was in London during WWII and present during the Normandy Landings. He recieved the Bronze Star for bravery in WWII. A while later he went on a Safari and survived two plane crashes! Isn't that crazy? Unfortunately in 1961 he comitted suicide. A sad way to go... but he left us some amazing works of literature!
His most famous work is The Old Man and The Sea. It was published in 1952. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Also he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
It is also not a novel but a novella. A novella is a story longer than a short story but shorter than a novel (Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, Call of the Wild by London, Candide by Voltaire are other examples of Novellas [I recomend all of these books by the way]).
The story takes place in Cuba on the coast (what?! You didn't think this was gonna be in the Sahara did you?). Also may I mention Hemingway lived in Cuba for a long time so he knew what he was writing about. Writers write what they know.
It opens with Santiago (the old man) coming in to the bay without a catch. He hasn't caught a single fish in 83 days! But 84 is a lucky number. He knows he's going to catch a big fish tomorrow.
The main jest of the story is Santiago vs Everything. And it's awesome. Also it's only about a hundred pages, so no excuses not to read it!
Now go read it! It will only take you about an hour or two, depending on how fast you read. This is on the 'must read list' too.
Thanks
