The Killers

"The Killers" is a short-story by Charles Bukowski collected in his 1973 collection South of No North, originally published by John Martin's Black Sparrow Press. The story elucidates Bukowski's publicly acknowledged artistic debt to Ernest Hemingway, the writer who had the most influence on American writers of Bukowksi's generation. Like Hemingway's "The Killers", Bukowski's story of the same name has as its thematic trope murder in a nihilistic universe. Unlike Hemingway, the killers actually accomplish their act in the time-frame of the story.