When he returned to Cuba after World War II, Ernest Hemingway faced the necessity of resurrecting his moribund literary career. He had closed out the 1930s with a triumphant novel about the Spanish civil war, confounding the critics who had declared his career to be over. But during World War II he had forsaken his art to serve as a Collier's correspondent - although he had actually published only six dispatches - and had confined his literary efforts to two long free verse poems written to Mary Welsh, whom he married in 1946. It was time to return to his real vocation.

Hemingway could not mark his return to letters by writing a mere journeyman novel or a few stories reminiscent of his prewar work. As he would observe in 1954, a writer of a certain standing had to strive continuously to push beyond his previous limits: