Men Without Women

In Ernest Hemingway's Men Without Women, pride survives where comfort, security, and mercy do not. Manuel Garcia, an aging bullfighter fresh from the hospital, goes to promoter Don Miguel Retana seeking work and finds himself treated as a cheap replacement rather than a star, forced to bargain for a place in a nocturnal corrida with little pay and a poor crew. In cafés and waiting rooms, the bullfighting world reveals its hard code of favoritism, fatigue, and bitter loyalty, until Manuel secures the veteran picador Zurito and steps into the arena under the lights. The corrida unfolds as a ritual of skill and danger: Manuel's cape work, Zurito's steady horse and precise pic, and the crowd's rising excitement turn the ring into a test of nerve and old mastery. Interwoven with this stark drama are travel scenes through Italy, where two men endure muddy roads, cold lunches, rain, and a stormy drive past Genoa, meeting comic awkwardness in Spezia's flirtatious restaurant and the petty corruption of a Fascist checkpoint. Across bullring and road, Hemingway traces endurance, disillusionment, and the stubborn dignity of men under pressure. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.