Which 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway follows an aging Cuban fisherman?

Ernest Hemingway’s 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is The Old Man and the Sea.

Published in 1952, the novella follows Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. He then hooks a huge marlin and struggles for days to bring it home.

The work is notable for its spare prose, extended fishing sequence, and themes of endurance, dignity, and human struggle. Santiago’s contest with the marlin becomes both a physical battle and a meditation on pride and perseverance.

The book was Hemingway’s last major work of fiction published during his lifetime. It won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and contributed to his receiving the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel is often confused with his earlier war novels, which did not win the Pulitzer for Fiction.