 First edition cover | |
| Author | Ernest Hemingway |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-fiction novel, memoir |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
Publication date | 1999 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 320 |
| ISBN | 978-0684849218 |
True at First Light is a book by American writer Ernest Hemingway about his 1953–54 safari in Kenya with his fourth wife Mary. It was released posthumously in his centennial year in 1999. In the book, which blends memoir and fiction, Hemingway explores conflict within a marriage, the conflict between the European and native cultures in Africa, and the fear a writer feels when his work becomes impossible. True at First Light includes descriptions of his earlier friendships with other writers and digressive ruminations on the nature of writing.
Hemingway began writing the book after he and his wife were involved in two plane crashes in the African bush in a two-day period in January 1954. He spent much of the next two years in Havana, recuperating and writing the manuscript of what he called "the Africa book", which remained unfinished at the time of his suicide in July 1961. Hemingway's son Patrick edited the work to half its original length to strengthen the underlying storyline and emphasize the fictional aspects.
True at First Light received mostly negative or lukewarm reviews from the popular press and sparked a literary controversy regarding whether, and how, an author's work should be reworked and published after his death. Unlike critics in the popular press, Hemingway scholars generally consider True at First Light to be complex and a worthy addition to his canon of later fiction.