True at First Light

True at First Light is a book by American novelist Ernest Hemingway about his 1953–54 East African safari with his fourth wife Mary, released posthumously in his centennial year in 1999. The book received mostly negative or lukewarm reviews from the popular press and sparked a literary controversy regarding how, and whether, an author's work should be reworked and published after his death. Unlike critics in the popular press, Hemingway scholars generally consider True at First Light to be complex and a worthy addition to his canon of later fiction.

In a two-day period in January 1954, Hemingway and Mary were in two plane crashes in the African bush. He was reported dead by the international press, arriving in Entebbe to face questions from reporters. The severity of his injuries was not completely known until he returned to Europe months later. Hemingway spent much of the next two years in Havana, recuperating and writing the manuscript of what he called 'the Africa book', which remained unfinished at the time of his suicide in July, 1961. In the 1970s, Mary donated it along with his other manuscripts to the John F. Kennedy Library. The manuscript was released to Hemingway's son Patrick in the mid-1990s. Patrick edited the work to half its original length to strengthen the underlying storyline and emphasize the fictional aspects. The result is a blend of memoir and fiction.

In the book, Hemingway explores conflict within a marriage, the conflict between the European and native cultures in Africa, and the fear a writer feels when his work becomes impossible. The book includes descriptions of his earlier friendships with other writers and digressive ruminations on the nature of writing.

Hemingway went on safari to Africa in 1933 with his second wife Pauline and always intended to return. That visit inspired Hemingway's "Snows of Kilimanjaro" published in The Green Hills of Africa, well-known parts of the Hemingway canon. Two decades later in 1953, having finished writing The Old Man and the Sea, he planned a trip to Africa to visit his son Patrick who lived in Tanganyika. When Look magazine offered to send him to Africa, paying $15,000 for expenses, $10,000 for rights to a 3500 word piece about the trip, and Earl Theisen as official photographer to go with him, he quickly accepted. Hemingway and Mary left Cuba in June, traveling first to Europe to make arrangements and leaving from Venice to Tanganyika a few months later. They arrived in August, and Hemingway was thrilled to be deputized as an honorary ranger, writing in a letter, "due to emergency (Mau Mau rebellion) been acting game ranger".Philip Percival, Hemingway's safari guide in 1933, joined the couple for the four-month expedition; they traveled from the banks of the Salengai, where Earl Theisen photographed Hemingway with a herd of elephants, to the Kimana Swamp, the Rift Valley and then on to visit Patrick in central Tanganyika. After visiting Patrick at his farm, they settled for two months on the north slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. During this period Percival left their camp to return to his farm, leaving Hemingway as game warden with local scouts reporting to him. Hemingway was proud to be a game warden and believed a book would come of the experience.

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