Much of the narrative describes Hemingway's adventures hunting in East Africa, interspersed with ruminations about literature and authors.

In Part 3 ("Pursuit and Failure") the action returns to the present with Hemingway unlucky in hunting, unable to find a kudu he tracks.

Writing for The New York Times, critic John Chamberlain claimed: "Green Hills of Africa is not one of the major Hemingway works.

"[3] However, two days later, writing for the same newspaper, critic C. G. Poore hailed The Green Hills of Africa as "the best-written story of big-game hunting anywhere I have read.

[6] Within a few months he was ready to blame the corrupting influence of the wealthy women in his life—his wife Pauline and his mistress Jane Mason.

[5] The result of his bitterness were two stories about Africa, which count among his most celebrated: "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", that featured husbands married to domineering women.

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.

This quote is frequently used as evidence that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is The Great American Novel:[8] The good writers are Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Mark Twain.

There is no order for good writers.... All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

Intermixed with these comments on James, Crane, and Twain are Hemingway’s views of American writers in general, most of whom, he says, came to a bad end.