Ernest Hemingway · 1970 · sea

Published nine years after Hemingway's death, in three parts. A painter called Thomas Hudson loses his sons, drinks in Havana, and then takes a disguised fishing boat out along the north coast of Cuba hunting the survivors of a sunk German submarine - which is what Hemingway himself did with the Pilar in 1942.

1. 1
   Bimini

   Part one: Hudson painting on the island, his three sons visiting for the summer, and the best writing in the book - a boy fighting a broadbill for six hours and losing it, and the news that comes afterwards from France.

2. 2
   Havana

   Part two: the Floridita, the cats at the finca, a wife arriving and leaving, and a man drinking in a way the novel does not editorialise about - and then the third son is killed flying, and there is nothing left to stay for.

3. 3
   Cayo Guillermo

   Part three, At Sea. Hudson's boat is fitted out for submarine hunting under Q-ship cover, and they find a massacred village on a key - everyone shot, and the German crew of a sunk U-boat gone off along the coast in a turtle boat.

4. 4
   Cayo Cruz

   The chase east through the channels inside the reef, in shallow water where a big boat cannot go and a small one can - reading tracks, burned fires and abandoned gear, and getting steadily closer to men who have nothing to lose.

5. 5
   Cayo Romano

   They corner the Germans in a mangrove channel and take fire from the bank. Hudson is hit three times steering, and lies on the deck being told he will be all right - and thinks that he has never really understood anything.