Writer Sailor Soldier Spy

The extraordinary untold story of Ernest Hemingways dangerous secret life in espionage A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A finalist for the William E. Colby Military Writers Award IMPORTANT Wall Street Journal • FASCINATING New York Review of Books • CAPTIVATING Missourian A riveting international cloakanddagger epic ranging from the Spanish Civil War to the liberation of Western Europe wartime China the Red Scare of Cold War America and the Cuban Revolution Writer Sailor Soldier Spy reveals for the first time Ernest Hemingway’s secret adventures in espionage and intelligence during the 1930s and 1940s including his role as a Soviet agent codenamed Argo a hidden chapter that fueled both his art and his undoing. While he was the historian at the esteemed CIA Museum Nicholas Reynolds a longtime American intelligence officer former U.S. Marine colonel and Oxfordtrained historian began to uncover clues suggesting Nobel Prizewinning novelist Ernest Hemingway was deeply involved in midtwentiethcentury spycraft a mysterious and shocking relationship that was far more complex sustained and fraught with risks than has ever been previously supposed. Now Reynoldss meticulously researched and captivating narrative looks among the shadows and finds a Hemingway not seen before London Review of Books revealing for the first time the whole story of this hidden side of Hemingways life his troubling recruitment by Soviet spies to work with the NKVD the forerunner to the KGB followed in short order by a complex set of secret relationships with American agencies. Starting with Hemingways sympathy to antifascist forces during the 1930s Reynolds illuminates Hemingways immersion in the lifeanddeath world of the revolutionary left from his passionate commitment to the Spanish Republic his successful pursuit by Soviet NKVD agents who valued Hemingways influence access and mobility his wartime meeting in East Asia with communist leader Chou EnLai the future premier of the Peoples Republic of China and finally to his undercover involvement with Cuban rebels in the late 1950s and his sympathy for Fidel Castro. Reynolds equally explores Hemingways participation in various roles as an agent for the United States government including hunting Nazi submarines with ONIsupplied munitions in the Caribbean on his boat Pilar his command of an informant ring in Cuba called the Crook Factory that reported to the American embassy in Havana and his ontheground role in Europe where he helped OSS gain key tactical intelligence for the liberation of Paris and fought alongside the U.S. infantry in the bloody endgame of World War II. As he examines the links between Hemingways work as an operative and as an author Reynolds reveals how Hemingways secret adventures influenced his literary output and contributed to the writers block and mental decline including paranoia that plagued him during the postwar years a period marked by the Red Scare and McCarthy hearings. Reynolds also illuminates how those same experiences played a role in some of Hemingways greatest works including For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea while also adding to the burden that he carried at the end of his life and perhaps contributing to his suicide. A literary biography with the soul of an espionage thriller Writer Sailor Soldier Spy is an essential contribution to our understanding of the life work and fate of one of Americas most legendary authors.