Nicholas Reynolds

Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A "riveting"* international cloak-and-dagger epic, here is the stunning untold story of Ernest Hemingway's dangerous secret life -- including his role as a Soviet agent code-named "Argo" -- that fueled his art and his undoing. In 2010, while he was the historian at the esteemed CIA Museum, Nicholas Reynolds, a longtime American intelligence officer, former U.S. Marine colonel, and Oxford-trained historian, began to uncover clues suggesting Nobel Prize-winning novelist Ernest Hemingway was deeply involved in mid-twentieth-century spycraft -- a mysterious and shocking relationship that was far more complex, sustained, and fraught with risks than has ever been previously supposed. Now Reynolds's meticulously researched and captivating narrative, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy, "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 secret relationships with American agencies, including the FBI, the Department of State, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the CIA. Starting with Hemingway's sympathy to antifascist forces during the 1930s, Reynolds illuminates Hemingway's immersion in the life-and-death world of the revolutionary left, from his passionate commitment to the Spanish Republic; his successful pursuit by Soviet NKVD agents, who valued Hemingway's influence, access, and mobility; his wartime meeting in East Asia with communist leader Chou En-Lai, the future premier of the People's 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 Hemingway's participation in various roles as an agent for the United States government, including hunting Nazi submarines with ONI-supplied 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 on-the-ground 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 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 (including paranoia) that plagued him during the postwar years -- a period marked by the Red Scare and McCarthy hearings, which destroyed the life of anyone with Soviet connections. 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 an essential contribution to our understanding of the life, work, and fate of one of America's most legendary authors. *William Doyle

Towarzysz Hemingway

Traducere de Carmen Tauwinkl „Nicholas Reynolds, fost curator al Muzeului CIA, demonstrează că lui Heminway îi era teamă că FBI-ul ar fi putut descoperi un secret murdar pe care-l ascunsese timp de douăzeci de ani: în anul 1940 acceptase să colaboreze cu NKVD, organul de represiune al Uniunii Sovietice.“ — Wall Street Journal „Reynolds caută printre umbre și găsește un Hemingway necunoscut până acum.“ — London Review of Books „Pornind de la pregătirea sa de agent de informații, Nicholas Reynolds descoperă un tezaur de documente care dovedesc recrutarea romancierului american în 1940 de către NKVD. Reynolds cercetează cu desăvârșită competență aventurile din Al Doilea Război Mondial ale lui Hemingway.“ — Library Journal „Admirator al lui Hemingway toată viața mea, am simțit ca și cum aș fi primit din plin o lovitură în stomac când am citit că semnase colaborarea cu NKVD. Cum era posibil? Întotdeauna avusese mulți prieteni de stânga, dar nu subscrisese niciodată la comunism (sau la vreo altă ideologie). Personajele create de el întruchipau atâtea dintre valorile americane pe care încă le prețuim: adevărul, curajul, independența, rezistența în momente de presiune, apărarea celor în nevoie. Vocea sa era în mod atât de americană și de revoluționară. Schimbase cursul literaturii americane în anii '20. Cu câteva săptămâni înainte de a intra în relație cu NKVD, spre sfârșitul anilor '40, publicase unul dintre cele mai importante romane politice ale secolului, Pentru cine bat clopotele. De ce să se alăture un astfel de om acoliților lui Stalin?“ — NICHOLAS REYNOLDS

Nicholas Reynolds

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