Winner Take Nothing
Winner Take Nothing is a 1933 collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. It’s his third and final collection, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on October 27, 1933. The first edition printed about 20,000 copies. The book follows A Farewell to Arms (1929) and Death in the Afternoon (1932).
The volume includes the following stories:
- After the Storm: A treasure hunter leaves the Florida Keys after a big storm, seeks wrecks for loot, finds an untouched cruise ship full of valuables and corpses but can’t access it; later the ship is looted by others.
- The Light of the World: A Nick Adams story where Nick and a friend visit a Michigan train station and encounter five prostitutes, among other locals.
- God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen: Set at Christmas in a hospital; a boy asks doctors to castrate him for lust, but they tell him there’s nothing wrong with him; he has misunderstood castration.
- The Sea Change: A married couple argue in a bar, with hints that the wife had an affair.
- The Mother of a Queen: A famed bullfighter, nicknamed a “queen,” is a miser who stops paying for his mother’s grave; his bones end up in a communal grave, and the narrator ends their friendship over a debt.
- One Reader Writes: A letter to an advice column asking whether syphilis contracted in Shanghai can be cured.
- Homage to Switzerland: A three-part story set in the same Swiss train station; three men sit in the cafe, each scene starting with the waitress offering coffee and leading in a different direction.
- Wine of Wyoming: Set in Prohibition-era Wyoming, a narrator meets a French immigrant couple who sell bootlegged beer and wine; the tale explores immigrant life and blends French and English dialogue.
Reissued in 1977, the collection included three additional stories.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 05:34 (CET).