Ernest Hemingway · 1940 · survival

Ernest Hemingway's 1940 novel of the Spanish Civil War, from his own time as a correspondent. Robert Jordan, an American demolitions man, is sent into the Sierra de Guadarrama behind fascist lines to blow a bridge in support of an attack on Segovia. Four days and three nights, and he is told at the start that he will not come back.

1. 1
   Madrid

   The Republican capital and Gaylord's, the hotel the Russians have taken over, where Jordan talks to Karkov and eats better than a besieged city should - and is afraid of being corrupted by it, and is not.

2. 2
   El Escorial

   General Golz's headquarters, where an American demolitions man is given his orders: blow a bridge behind fascist lines at the exact moment an offensive begins, neither before nor after.

3. 3
   Sierra de Guadarrama

   The pine forests between Madrid and Segovia. Anselmo brings Jordan to a cave, Pablo's band, and Maria - and four days and three nights in which he gets an entire life, having been told he will not survive the mission.

4. 4
   El Sordo's hill

   Traced through the snow to a hilltop, El Sordo and his men make a stand and are finished off by aircraft - the chapter Hemingway builds against Custer at the Little Big Horn, and the novel's second ending.

5. 5
   The bridge

   The steel bridge in the gorge, blown on time with Anselmo killed by his own blast - and Jordan's leg broken under a horse afterwards, left behind with a machine gun on the pine needles of the forest floor.

6. 6
   Segovia

   The objective. The offensive Jordan died to protect is already known to the fascists and already lost, and Andres never reaches Golz in time to stop it - which is the point the whole novel is making.