Celebrated American novelist Ernest Hemingway was a Soviet spy for Joseph Stalin, a new book has claimed. Written by former CIA officer Nicholas Reynolds, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 suggests the war correspondent and novelist led a secret double life. Mr Reynolds, who said he was able to access a classified KGB file smuggled out of Moscow, claims the Pulitzer prize-winning author was recruited in 1940 by the predecessor to the KGB known as NKVD. The document reportedly revealed that Hemingway was given the codename “Argo” after he was recruited by Jacob Golos, a top NKVD official in New York. “Argo did not give us any political information, though he repeatedly expressed his willingness and desire to help us,” the Soviet file reportedly reads. Mr Reynolds, a military historian, said he felt “physically ill” when he stumbled across the detail linking Hemingway to Stalin.