A New York Times–bestseller from an intelligence insider reveals the “fascinating new research” revealing Hemingway’s hidden life in espionage (New York Review of Books).
A riveting epic, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy reveals for the first time Ernest Hemingway’s secret adventures in espionage and intelligence.
While he was the historian at the CIA Museum, Nicholas Reynolds, former American intelligence officer and U.S. Marine colonel, uncovered clues suggesting the Nobel Prize-winning novelist was deeply involved in spycraft. Now Reynolds's 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 Hemingway's 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 relationships with American agencies.
As he examines the links between Hemingway's work as an operative and as an author, Reynolds reveals how Hemingway's secret adventures influenced his literary output and contributed to the writer's block and mental decline that plagued him during the postwar years. Reynolds also illuminates how those same experiences played a role in some of Hemingway's 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 essential to our understanding of one of America's most legendary authors.
Nicholas Reynolds has worked in the fields of modern military history and intelligence off and on for forty years, with some unusual detours. Freshly minted PhD from Oxford University in hand, he joined the United States Marine Corps in the 1970s, serving as an infantry officer and then as a historian. As a colonel in the reserves, he eventually became officer in charge of field history, deploying historians around the world to capture history as it was being made. When not on duty with the USMC, he served as a CIA officer at home and abroad, immersing himself in the very human business of espionage. Most recently, he was the historian for the CIA Museum, responsible for developing its strategic plan and helping to turn remarkable artifacts into compelling stories. He currently teaches as an adjunct professor for Johns Hopkins University and, with his wife, Becky, cares for rescue pugs.
Table of Contents
Cast of Characters xiii
Introduction xxi
Chapter 1 Awakening: when the Sea Turned the Land Inside Out 1
Chapter 2 The Writer and the Commissar: Going to War in Spain 15
Chapter 3 Returning to Spain: To Stay the Course 37
Chapter 4 The Bell Tolls for the Republic: Hemingway Bears Witness 53
Chapter 5 The Secret File: The NKVD Plays its Hand 69
Chapter 6 To Spy or Not to Spy: China and the Strain of War 91
Chapter 7 The Crook Factor: A Secret War on Land 108
Chapter 8 Pilar and the War at Sea: A Secret Agent of my Government 131
Chapter 9 On to Paris: Brave as a Saladang 151
Chapter 10 At the Front: The Last Months of the Great War against Fascism 173
Chapter 11 "The Creeps": Not War, not Peace 185
Chapter 12 The Cold War: No more Brave Words 207
Chapter 13 No Room to Maneuver: The Mature Antifascist in Cuba and Ketchum 221
