A Farewell to Arms is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set during the Italian campaign of World War I. It is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army.
Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto - of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized - is one of the greatest moments in literary history.
Its publication ensured Hemingway's place as a modern American writer of considerable stature. The book became his first best-seller and has been called "the premier American war novel from World War I".