- First published in 1926 and Ernest Hemingway"s first major novel, The Sun Also Rises explores the world of the "Lost Generation" - a term coined by his friend Gertrude Stein - through the lives of a group of American expatriates in Europe after World War I. Jake Barnes, wounded in the war, is hopelessly in love with the aristocratic Brett Ashley, a woman who attracts and becomes involved with almost every man she meets. Barnes and his friends spend much of their time drinking and pursuing such excitements as the fiesta in Pamplona, having lost their optimism and sense of purpose. Hemingway"s own circle of friends, including Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce, provided much of his inspiration. 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.