Associated Press

HAVANA—Ernest Hemingway is back at the bar in his beloved El Floridita restaurant—this time permanently as a life-size bronze statute.

The statute of the late writer, who made pre-Revolutionary Cuba his home for many years, is situated in the same corner of the bar he frequented during more than two decades on the island.

Hemingway lived just east of Havana at the farm known as Finca Vigia from 1940 to 1961, and came into town to enjoy his favorite Cuban drinks—frozen daquiris and sour-sweet mojitos laced with mint leaves.

“There are very few times a sculpture can be placed in the exact place he frequented,” said sculptor Jose Villa Soberon, who took eight months to complete the work that will be officially unveiled on Monday.

Soberon is already known here as the man who sculpted a life-sized bronze statute of the late singer John Lennon, which sits on a bench in a Havana park.

The Hemingway statute leans comfortably against the far end of the bar, right hand on hip, left foot on the on the bar’s foot rest.

The establishment’s bartenders promise to place a daiquiri before the image everyday in Hemingway’s honor.

The author of such works as “The Old Man and the Sea,” “A Farewell to Arms,” and “The Sun Also Rises,” committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961.