'He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated. ' 'Not only the finest long short story that Hemingway has ever written, but one of the finest written by anyone' Listener 'Hemingway brings to the old man's tragic fishing trip all his real, deep, intuitive understanding of simple men who face primitive, ill-rewarded fates' Standard 'As an example of 'declarative' prose it is unsurpassed in Hemingway's oeuvre. Every word tells and there is not a word too many' Anthony Burgess, Nintey-Nine Novels