Fiction 07: Ernest Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro
The Snows of Kilimanjaro is the finest short story that Hemingway wrote. It first appeared in the August edition of Esquire magazine in 1936.
“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngàje Ngài', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”
"The marvellous thing is that it's painless,' he said. "That's how you know when it starts.'
'Is it really?'
'Absolutely. I'm awfully sorry about the odour, though. That must bother you.'
'Don't! Please don't.'
'Look at them,' he said. 'Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them like that?'
The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa tree and as he looked out past the shade on to the glare of the plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they passed.
'They've been there since the day the truck broke down,' he said. "Today's the first time any have lit on the ground. …
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