Hemingway’s prose style was probably the most widely imitated of any in the 20th century. He wished to strip his own use of language of inessentials, ridding it of all traces of verbosity, embellishment, and sentimentality. The short story "Cat in the Rain" was written by Ernest Hemingway in the 1920s. It is about an American couple that spends their holidays in an Italian hotel. It is a rainy day and the American woman sees a cat in the rain, which she wants to protect from the raindrops. When she goes out of the hotel, which is kept by an old Italian who really seems to do everything to please that woman, and wants to get the cat, it is gone. After returning to the hotel room, she starts a conversation with her husband George, who is reading all the time, telling him how much she wants to have a cat and other things… Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker writes that Hemingway learned from his short stories how to "get the most from the least, how to prune language, how to multiply intensities, and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth". Everyone will read a Hemingway piece differently based on his or her own life experiences. This is true of many writers but particularly of Hemingway who purposely stripped his sentences of detailed description. Enjoy free online English audiobook “Cat in the Rain”, the breathtaking short story which regarded as one of Hemingway's greatest works.
