First published 2017
Nicholas Reynolds reveals how Ernest Hemingway lived a double life as both acclaimed novelist and secret operative from 1935 to 1961. The author, a former CIA Museum historian and intelligence officer, traces Hemingway's recruitment by Soviet NKVD agents who gave him the code name "Argo." Reynolds documents how Hemingway simultaneously worked for multiple American agencies, hunting Nazi submarines in the Caribbean, running the "Crook Factory" spy network in Cuba, and gathering intelligence during the liberation of Paris. The book follows Hemingway from his antifascist activities during the Spanish Civil War through his meetings with Communist leader Chou En-Lai in Asia to his involvement with Cuban revolutionaries and Fidel Castro. Reynolds demonstrates how these covert operations influenced masterworks like For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, while also contributing to the paranoia and mental decline that marked Hemingway's final years during the Red Scare era.
Genres: biography, historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, 21st-century, military-history, espionage, american-history
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: double-life, secret-identity, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Caribbean, Cuba, Paris
Period: 1935-1961, Cold War, Spanish Civil War
384 pages · Hardcover · Mariner Books