(Winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Ernest Hemingway"s slim, magnificent novel is, on the surface, the tale of an aging fisherman, a young boy, and a giant fish. It is arguably his single most important work, and was specifically cited by the Swedish Academy when they awarded Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Writing in a terse, stripped-down style, first as a reporter and then a novelist, Hemingway was an enormously influential author from the 1920s through the 50s, and won both the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes. J.D. Salinger, Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, and Jack Kerouac all acknowledged their indebtedness to him, as did non-authors like artist Edward Hopper, whose Nighthawks at the Diner was inspired in part by Hemingway"s short stories.