A Simple Enquiry

A Simple Enquiry is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. It was published in 1927 in the collection Men Without Women.^[1]

Synopsis

Three Italian soldiers are snowbound. The senior soldier, the Major, calls his 19-year-old orderly into his room and questions him about his personal life. He appears to be propositioning the orderly; when his advances are effectively rebuffed he dismisses the orderly from the room, with the understanding that he will not press the issue. His adjutant is the ambiguous witness.

Characters

The major
Tonani, an adjutant
Pinin, the major's orderly

References

↑ Meyers, Jeffrey. Ernest Hemingway: The Critical Heritage (Psychology Press, 1997), p. 112.

Text of 'A Simple Enquiry' at scribd.com

Ernest Hemingway

Bibliography

Novels

The Torrents of Spring (1926)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
To Have and Have Not (1937)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Non-fiction

Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Posthumous

Short stories

"Indian Camp" (1925)
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" (1925)
"The End of Something" (1925)
"The Three-Day Blow" (1925)
"The Battler" (1925)
"A Very Short Story" (1925)
"Soldier's Home" (1925)
"The Revolutionist" (1925)
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" (1925)
"Cat in the Rain" (1925)
"Out of Season" (1925)
"Cross Country Snow" (1925)
"My Old Man" (1925)
"Big Two-Hearted River" (1925)
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1926)
"A Canary for One" (1926)
"Fifty Grand" (1927)
"Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
"The Killers" (1927)
"The Undefeated" (1927)
"Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927)
"In Another Country" (1927)
"On the Quai at Smyrna" (1930)
"Fathers and Sons" (1932)
"A Day's Wait" (1933)
"The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (1933)
"A Way You'll Never Be" (1933)
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936)
"The Capital of the World" (1936)
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936)

Short story
collections

Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
In Our Time (1925)
Men Without Women (1927)
Winner Take Nothing (1933)
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1961)
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)
The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
Ernest Hemingway: The Collected Stories (1995)

Story fragments

"On Writing"

Poetry

88 Poems (1979)
Complete Poems

Letters and
journalism

Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981)
Dateline: Toronto (1985)
The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway (2011)

Adaptations

The Sun Also Rises	1957 film 1984 film Opera The Select (The Sun Also Rises) Ballet

"The Killers"	1946 film 1956 film 1964 film Bukowski short story

A Farewell to Arms	1932 film 1957 film 1966 TV series

To Have and Have Not	1944 film The Breaking Point (1950) The Gun Runners (1958) Captain Khorshid (1987)

For Whom the Bell Tolls	1943 film 1965 TV series Metallica song

The Old Man and the Sea	1958 film 1990 miniseries 1999 film

Other film adaptations	The Macomber Affair (1947) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) Islands in the Stream (1977)