"The Old Man and the Sea" became a book-of-the-month selection, made Hemingway an international celebrity, and won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1952, a month before he left for his second trip to Africa.
Hemingwaya je vedno bolj mučila depresija, saj je v tem obdobju umrlo kar nekaj njegovih literarnih sodobnikov in prijateljev: 1939 Yeats in Ford Madox Ford, 1940 Scott Fitzgerald, 1941 Sherwood Anderson in James Joyce, 1946 Gertrude Stein in naslednjega leta Max Perkins, Hemingwayev prijatelj in dolgoletni urednik pri založbi "Scribner".