Without any doubt or reservation, I can frankly say that blessed are those, who are in constant company of books. Books never desert us, when we fall prey to evil days, and they never flatter us, when fortune smiles on us.
In my life so far, I have read many books including the titles on travels and adventures; biographies and autobiographies; love poems and nature poems; novels and stories and plays written by various authors of long standing and good repute.
If I am asked to choose the book which I like most, I would go for the novel ‘the old man and the sea,’ written by the world-renowned novelist ‘Ernest Hemingway’ (1899-1961).
Hemingway was a highly successful, prolific, U.S. writer of international fame and his novel in question was awarded the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, was, actually, brought out in 1952.
Naturally and undisputedly, a masterpiece of Hemingway, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ is a beautiful description of the changing phases in the life of a man. It brings to the mind how the behaviour of acquaintances, friends, Nations and co-workers of a man undergoes a sea change with the drifting of a phase in life.
The main character in the novel is an old fisherman, facing the loss of his lost vigour with great patience and fortitude. An expert master fisherman in his hay days, the old man had, in his by-gone days, trained a number of aspiring young men in baiting and catching fish.
They had all learnt venturing out into the sea and fight against the ebb and flow of tides under his expert guidance. They not only admired him for his great skill and courage; but heaped