OVER TWO HUNDRED ESSAYS, notes, and books appear on Ernest Hemingway’s life and art annually. Add the occasional posthumous publication and the critical debate rises to a feverish pitch. That Hemingway’s writing continues to sustain such intense critical scrutiny proves once again that although he writes simply, Hemingway is not a simple writer. Scholars who seek to answer questions and contribute to the ever-increasing pool of Hemingway knowledge struggle to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field. Testifying to their diligence and success is the dramatic increase in the quality of Hemingway scholarship over the past two decades. Theoretical approaches, long underrepresented in traditional Hemingway criticism, are now published alongside the more conventional biographical, textual, and thematic studies, offering readers new ways of envisioning Hemingway’s art. Many of these studies offer fresh and innovative ways of approaching his writings, renewing interest in even those works long considered by many to be critically exhausted. The old ways are giving rise to the new, and recent Hemingway scholarship is all the better for it.

Although the African works in general have not garnered the critical attention of such mainstays as The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, they continue to hold their own in the critical stakes, and their underexposure to various theoretical lenses promises exciting new developments for future studies. Hemingway visited Africa twice, once in the mid-1930s and again in the mid-1950s. His publication of Green Hills of Africa in 1935 was meant to bolster his sagging reputation after the disappointing reception of his first nonfiction book, Death in the Afternoon, in 1932. However, the mixed reception of Green Hills of Africa only compounded Hemingway’s disappointment and perhaps helps to explain the dearth of scholarly attention that haunted the book until very recently.

Currently, Green Hills of Africa and the two stories that followed the first safari (“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”) are enjoying a renascence in critical attention, due largely to the rise of postcolonial theory and the two posthumous publications based on Hemingway’s second safari.