Julian Barnes reads Homage To Switzerland by Ernest Hemingway

Julian Barnes
Homage to Switzerland, by Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

'I chose Ernest Hemingway because he is deeply out of fashion, still over-admired by the literary boys-with-toys brigade, still shunned by women readers put off by the macho myth. His style is wrongly thought to be both simple and imitable; it is neither. His novels are better known than his stories, but it is in the latter that his genius shows fullest, and where his style works best. I deliberately didn't choose one of the famous stories, or anything to do with bullfighters, guns or Africa. "Homage to Switzerland" is a quiet, sly, funny story (Hemingway's wit is also undervalued) which also – rarely – is formally inventive. It has a three-part, overlapping structure, in which three Americans wait at different Swiss station cafés for the same train to take them back to Paris. Each man plays games of the sort a moneyed and therefore powerful expatriate is tempted to play with the nominally subservient locals – waitresses, ­porters, and a pedantic retired academic. But as the story develops, it's clear that social power and moral power are not on the same side. I hope "Homage to Switzerland" will make you forget the swaggering "Papa" Hemingway of myth, and hear instead the truthful artist.'

Listen to Julian Barnes read Hemingway on the Guardian website beginning Saturday, 18 December 2010.