10 Greatest Unfinished Novels

Islands in the Stream not only inspired the title of the song (not a facetious joke, that's actually true) but also managed to contain some of Hemingway's finest prose.

Left unfinished at the time of his suicide, Islands in the Stream is a tantalising glimmering piece of work which contains flashes of the young Hemingway brilliance, sadly lost in his later years through increasing mental strain and his trying to live up to his own legend.

Islands in the Stream tells the story of three stages in the life of Thomas Hudson, an American painter living in the Caribbean. The novel shows him and his relationships, particularly with his sons, through his time in Bimini before WWII, then in Cuba during the war, doing reconnaissance work for the Americans.

Edited after his death, Islands in the Stream was eventually posthumously published and recognised as something of a return to form for Papa Hemingway, as he was known to some. Particularly in the early fishing sequence and the final 'At Sea' act, the prose is some of the writer's most gracefully balanced.