3 volumes
from 1997
Bound
about 550 pages
 
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) from 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades who fights alongside a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a bomber, he is assigned the task of blowing up a bridge during the attack on Segovia. The novel is considered one of Hemingway's central works, along with And the Sun Goes Away, The Old Man and the Sea, and A Farewell to Arms.
 
The book's title is taken from the metaphysical poet John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624); specifically, Hemingway refers to "Meditation XVII". Hemingway quotes parts of "Meditation" (and uses Donne's original language) in the book's introduction, which again refers to the practice of ringing church bells at funerals:
 
"No man is an Island, intire of it selfe; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine own  were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” - Wikipedia