Novels similar to Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea?

October 2, 2018 4:46 PM

In terms of style of writing, narration--setting can be from anywhere. Nature and beaches would be an asset.
posted by RearWindow to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

John Steinbeck and Hermann Hesse come to mind..
posted by bigZLiLk at 8:09 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

I find Tarka the Otter to be similar in its stark but poetic prose style, and in its unsentimental view of nature and animals.
posted by seasparrow at 9:13 PM on October 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Much darker and more violent, but similar biblical/blank prose and lots of nature: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
posted by caek at 10:13 PM on October 2, 2018

If you like Hemingway, you'll probably like Guy de Maupassant. He writes mainly short stories, but he was a big stylistic influence on Hemingway. "Two Friends" might be something you like; the background is fishing, and it's shockingly unsentimental. It's available online if you'd like to give it a shot.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:38 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Far Tortuga by Peter Mathiassen. The writing style is much trippier than Hem, but some of the mood and setting are close by.
posted by ovvl at 9:05 AM on October 3, 2018

I think Samuel Beckett's novels have a lot in common thematically with The Old Man And The Sea, especially the bleaker, later ones. They're built around the same sense of isolation, and are similarly simultaneously introspective and doggedly fixated on an increasingly irrelevant goal. Beckett's take is, however, decidedly more abstract -- he foregoes realism to better isolate the psychological/symbolic feel of the situation. I'm thinking particularly of How It is, or the Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable trilogy, but Watt also comes close.
posted by spindle at 9:36 AM on October 3, 2018