Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935–1961

Nicholas E. Reynolds

Mar 2017 · HarperCollins

About this ebook

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.

“Important.” —Wall Street Journal

Ratings and reviews

the title was amazing... it made the book even better.

About the author

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.