istock (background) / Scribner (cover) The Old Man and the Sea was the last major work Ernest Hemingway published in his lifetime. The simple story is about an old man who catches a giant fish in the waters off Cuba, only to have it devoured by sharks. Defeated, he returns home with the fish’s skeleton attached to the boat. Many consider this spare novel to be Hemingway’s best work. 1. Ernest Hemingway wrote When The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952, Hemingway hadn’t written a significant literary work for over a decade. His last successful book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, came out in 1940. To make matters worse, his 1950 novel