HAVANA, June 18 (Xinhua) -- It has been 49 years since Ernest Hemingway lived in Cuba but scholars still flock to the island annually to discuss the American writer who penned such classics as "The Old Man and the Sea."

    Hemingway experts from the United States, Italy and Cuba gathered here Thursday to discuss the author who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

    Hemingway, who was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, spent nine of his 20 years living in Cuba at the Ambos Mundos hotel in Havana. It was there that he began writing "For Whom The Bell Tolls" in 1934.

    Hemingway visited Havana for the first time in April 1928 during a trip to Key West, Florida.

    In one of his journals, Hemingway wrote about Cuba: "One lives in this island because in the freshness of the morning you can work better and more comfortably than in any other place."

    Hemingway was inspired by Cuba to write works such as "To Have and Not To Have" (1937), "For Whom The Bell Tolls" (1940), "The Old Man and The Sea," (1952) and "Islands In The Stream," published in 1970 after his death.

    The room that Hemingway lived in during his stay at the Ambos Mundos hotel has since been turned into a museum. Hemingway later moved from the hotel to a farm near Havana that now is also a museum.

    Hemingway also enjoyed walking in Cojimar, a coastal city to the west of Havana. It was in Cojimar where he met the man that became the inspiration for the main character in "The Old Man and The Sea."

    Hemingway returned to the United States from Cuba in 1960 and killed himself in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961, just 19 days before his 62nd birthday.