It was occasioned by an African safari the author took with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, in 1933-1934. In a brief foreword, Hemingway called the book a novel based on real people and actual events.

Ernest Hemingway says that he is attempting “to write an absolutely true book to see whether the shape of a country and the pattern of a month’s action can, if truly presented, compete with a work of the imagination.” The result is a novelized account of a safari he joined in East Africa from December 8, 1933, to February 17, 1934.

None of the characters or incidents in this book is imaginary. Any one not finding sufficient love interest is at liberty, while reading it, to insert whatever love interest he or she may have at the time. The writer has attempted to write an absolutely true book to see whether the shape of a country and the pattern of a month's action can, if truly presented, compete with a work of the imagination.