The action of The Sun Also Rises takes place during the mid-1920s in three locations:
* Paris, mainly the city’s Latin Quarter and Montparnasse districts, on the Left Bank south of the River Seine. Because the University of Paris is located in the Latin Quarter, intellectuals and artists have frequented this neighborhood for centuries.
* The Basque region of France and Spain. For hundreds if not thousands of years, a distinct people known as the Basques have occupied three provinces in the southwest of France and four in northern Spain. The Basque country straddles the Pyrenees mountains, and it faces the Atlantic Ocean on one side. (The resort town of San Sebastian is located here.) The town of Pamplona, the setting of much of The Sun Also Rises, is in the Spanish province of Navarra, in the Basque region’s rural interior. The Basques speak a language that is entirely unrelated to either Spanish or French, and they are credited with inventing the beret (worn by Brett and Mike in the novel), the espadrille (a rope-soled shoe), and the game of jai alai. The Basques are fiercely independent, which may partially explain the attraction of the region to Jake, Brett, and the others; it is a place apart from the rest of Europe and, thus, to some degree, apart from European history, including the Great War.
* Madrid, capital of Spain.
