What Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway features the character Santiago?

What Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway features Santiago? The answer is The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway’s short novel centers on Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles alone to land a giant marlin.

Published in 1952, the book was Hemingway’s final major work published during his lifetime. Its spare prose follows the fisherman’s physical ordeal while also exploring dignity, perseverance, pride, aging, and the relationship between humans and nature. Santiago succeeds in catching the marlin, but sharks destroy much of the fish during his return journey.

The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and helped restore Hemingway’s literary reputation after several less successful works. It also contributed to his receiving the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. The story is often confused with Hemingway’s earlier novels The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, none of which feature Santiago as their central character.