With the fiesta behind him, Jake escapes alone to San Sebastián — cold water, quiet days, a little order restored. Then a telegram: Brett is alone and in trouble in Madrid. He goes to her at once. She has sent Romero away — she will not be the one to ruin a fine young man — and now, broke and shaken, she has only Jake. Over a last drink and a slow taxi through the traffic comes the most famous closing line in modern American fiction.

The final chapter of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, read in full. Thank you for listening to the whole book — follow the show for more full-length classics.

📖 Produced by ClutchCut Studio

🎵 Sound design & mix: ClutchCut Studio; ambient string beds from the ClutchCut Music Library

📝 Source: from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (public domain)

🌐 Website: https://www.clutchcut.studio/

🎬 Visuals & more shows: https://www.clutchcut.studio/podcasts

The last day of the fiesta. Three matadors take the sand — the fading Belmonte, the steady Marcial, and Romero, battered by Cohn's fists yet fighting with a purity no one there has ever seen. He dedicates a bull to Brett and kills it perfectly — and then the two of them are gone, off to Madrid together. The rockets fizzle out, the crowds thin, and the friends drift apart as the fiesta dies.

Chapter 18 of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, read in full. New chapters released regularly — follow so you never miss the next.

📖 Produced by ClutchCut Studio

🎵 Sound design & mix: ClutchCut Studio; ambient string beds from the ClutchCut Music Library

📝 Source: from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (public domain)

🌐 Website: https://www.clutchcut.studio/

🎬 Visuals & more shows: https://www.clutchcut.studio/podcasts

Something in Robert Cohn finally snaps. Outside the café he drops Jake and Mike with his fists, then climbs to Romero's room to beat the boy senseless — but the young matador will not stay down, rising again and again until Cohn breaks and weeps. By morning Cohn has left Pamplona. In the streets a man is caught and killed in the run of the bulls, and that afternoon Romero kills the very same bull — and its ear is carried away by Brett.

Chapter 17 of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, read in full. New chapters released regularly — follow so you never miss the next.

📖 Produced by ClutchCut Studio

🎵 Sound design & mix: ClutchCut Studio; ambient string beds from the ClutchCut Music Library

📝 Source: from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (public domain)

🌐 Website: https://www.clutchcut.studio/

🎬 Visuals & more shows: https://www.clutchcut.studio/podcasts

Rain sweeps the fiesta, and the danger moves indoors. Old Montoya fears for Pedro Romero — the pure young matador the foreign crowd could ruin. At dinner Brett can't take her eyes off him; Mike, deep in drink, turns cruel on Cohn; and Brett, unable to stop herself, asks Jake for the one favor he shouldn't grant. By night's end she has gone off with the boy.

Chapter 16 of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, read in full. New chapters released regularly — follow so you never miss the next.

📖 Produced by ClutchCut Studio

🎵 Sound design & mix: ClutchCut Studio; ambient string beds from the ClutchCut Music Library

📝 Source: from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (public domain)

🌐 Website: https://www.clutchcut.studio/

🎬 Visuals & more shows: https://www.clutchcut.studio/podcasts

The fiesta of San Fermín erupts — seven days and nights of wine, drums, and dancing that swallow the town whole. Bulls thunder through the streets at dawn, the first corridas fill the ring, and a beautiful nineteen-year-old matador named Pedro Romero steps onto the sand. Brett can't look away — and soon, neither can anyone.

Chapter 15 of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, read in full. New chapters released regularly — follow so you never miss the next.

Made with ClutchCut Studio.

A sleepless, drink-blurred night, and Jake takes stock — of money and morality, of what you pay for what you get, of Brett and Cohn and how a person is supposed to live. A quiet, searching pause before the fiesta breaks over them all.

Chapter 14 of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, read in full. New chapters released regularly — follow so you never miss the next.

Made with ClutchCut Studio.

Back to Pamplona and the gathering storm. Jake and Bill rejoin Brett — and meet her fiancé, Mike Campbell: charming, broke, and dangerous when he drinks. The prize bulls are unloaded, Jake explains the deadly art to come, and Mike, sensing Cohn's devotion to Brett, begins to sharpen his knives.

Chapter 13 of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, read in full. New chapters released regularly — follow so you never miss the next.

Made with ClutchCut Studio.

Days of trout streams and easy friendship. Jake and Bill fish the Irati, trade the funniest and most tender banter in the whole novel, share wine with an Englishman named Harris, and — for a little while — are perfectly, uncomplicatedly happy. Then the letters arrive, and the world calls them back.

Chapter 12 of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, read in full. New chapters released regularly — follow so you never miss the next.

Made with ClutchCut Studio.