After reading True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway, I read his earlier “fictional memoir,” The Green Hills of Africa, which is similar, in the same way that he dramatizes the personalities of the African safari staff; his wife (the second); the safari’s “white hunter,” Philip Percival, who, in both books is Hemingway’s mentor and faux father figure; and several of the native Africans, who by the second book have become distinct characters who play off Hemingway’s persona. In Green Hills, that persona is embarrassingly raw, petty, vindictive, rude and child-like, along with his admirable traits which are dominated by uncanny, acute observation, his precision of language, emotions, and his stated goal of creating an effective, dramatic story out of presumable truth and reality. He clearly succeeds.

I’ve just finished my third reading of True at First Light, published in 1999. It is described as a “fictionalized memoir,” and my recent reading opened up my understanding of the book in startling ways. In significant ways it is a precursor to A Moveable Feast and an eerie foreshadowing of what was to unfold in Hemingway’s actual life: that is the serious injuries that he suffered in a real-life plane crash at the end of the trip to Africa, which gave him the material for this book. It is so revealing. He paints indelible portraits of two women, “Mary,” the name of his actual wife, and “Debba,” his fictionalized African “wife.” There is a great deal about literature, well-known writers, and a section about Paris that even includes the phrase “A Moveable Feast.”