The Dangerous Summer

“… is Hemingway’s account of his re-discovery of Spain. Written only a year before he died, the manuscript remained unpublished for over twenty years. It is now published for the first time, and shows Hemingway in classic style, writing on two of this most important themes.
One is Spain itself. Hemingway’s ability to make you feel as if you are there with him, lunching on a slab of Manchego cheese with a glass of Valdepenaas, enjoying the harshness of La Mancha and Castile, driving endless miles from one bullfight to the next, is present on every page.
The other great theme is bullfighting. It was through his friendship with Antonio Ordonez, the son of the great Cayetano whose portrait had appeared in The Sun Also Rises, that Hemingway witnessed the deadly rivalry between Ordonez and his brother-in-law Dominguin which, after a series of increasingly competitive mano a mano combats in the ‘dangerous summer’ of 1959, resulted in one of them being horribly gored. The courage and artistry of the two matadors, and the tension between them, are described in prose as charged as any Hemingway wrote. ..”