Summary

Author's Preface: Hemingway explains that Kilimanjaro is snow-covered, the highest mountain in Africa. He tells the story of the unexplained frozen carcass of a leopard that wandered near the western summit.

This Hemingway short story opens with dialogue between a man and another person; we learn in a few paragraphs that the other person is a woman, and that the man believes he will die soon. They sit under a mimosa tree as they watch vultures fly in circles overhead. He wonders aloud whether they have come because they see he is helpless or if they can smell his leg, which is rotting with gangrene.

He observes that he has been watching the large, ugly birds since the day they were stranded, and today is the first day the birds have landed on the ground. He thinks it is ironic that...