Travel and Imperialist Nostalgia in Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa

Abstract

This paper examines the politics of travel and imperialist nostalgia in Ernest Hemingway’s memoir Green Hills of Africa. Informed by recent theoretical contributions to travel and postcolonial studies, this paper investigates ways in which the representation of travel and nostalgia in this memoir speaks to the colonial and imperialist rhetoric. Unlike previous studies, this paper suggests that the travels and nostalgia of Hemingway for Green Hills of Africa reflect certain ideological and historical determinants of the interwar politics that dominated modern American literature. While Hemingway seems to distance himself from the rhetoric of the empire, his reflections on travelling in Africa and his nostalgia for it are arguably entangled by it. This paper demonstrates that Hemingway’s narrative extends a dichotomy between the East and West constructed by 19th century (American) orientalist travel writers and critiqued by Edward Said..