Customer Reviews

The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(1)
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I wasn't sure about a Hemingway play. Sure, Papa is one of my favorite fiction writers, but could he write for the stage as well as he wrote stories?

The Fifth Column proved to be every bit as good as Hemingway's best fiction. The deep characters and fascinating, realistic sequence of events are brilliantly written. The reader can picture the drama as if it was being acted out before him.

I've recommended this book to several people; some are hesitant to read it because the story's setting (the Spanish Civil War) doesn't interest them. But in Hemingway's fiction, the setting is not as important as how people and the things that happen to them are communicated on the page. He was a truly master writer, able to make characters and situations fascinating regardless of what the reader thought of the story's setting.

One suggestion: I read the four short stories before I read the play, and I strongly recommend that sequence. Reading the stories first enables you to see transition of the events from real life to Hemingway's mind, then to the page, and finally to the stage. Seeing this transition will give the reader an appreciation for Hemingway's ability to so brilliantly put into words his own observations and experiences.

If you are a Hemingway fan, or if you just like good fiction, it doesn't get much better than this.

The Fifth Column part of the book is very entertaining. I enjoyed it more than the four stories. Give this book a chance if you have any interest in either the Spanish Civil War or Ernest Hemingway. Also try A SUN ALSO RISES. That book is good as well.

This play and these four stories are exactly what I was looking for when I picked this up. Hemingway is no better than when he is in Spain and especially when he is at war in Spain. I had not known about the play before but it was full of the same characters, same relationships that we see him examining in all his work from this time.

This one is worth picking up, whether you are new to Hemingway, or looking for another gem. He rarely disappoints and certainly doesn't here.

As expected very good. interesting to see how Hemimgway's play compares with his stories. It's of its time as are the stories. His laconic detached non involved style a bit bloodless.

Hemingway, Ernest copyright 1938 The Fifth Column. Scribener, New York 1st edition (May 26, 1998)

The characters of the executioners are derived in great part from Hemingway's contact with Rolando Masferrer. Hemingway knew Rolando Masferrer, and is reported on some occasions such as a reception at the Soviet Embassy in Havana to have talked with Masferrer for quite some time.

This is clear from the text of the play for instance: in a conversation between two killers : "PHILLIP. And Antonio. Sometimes ... were there any mistakes. ANTONIO. Certainly Oh, yes mistakes, Yes. Yes. ... A very few ... PHILLIP. And how did the mistakes die? ANTONIO [Proudly] All very well. PHILLIP. Ah--[it is a noise a boxer might make when he is hit with a hard body punch] (Masferrer was a close associate of a friend of Hemingway's Manolo Castro, who for a time was sports director in Cuba, and once let Hemingway referee an important match, and Manolo was eventually killed in a assassination in which Fidel Castro (no relative) was involved. L.D.) and this is the trade we're in now ... ANTONIO But you've only been doing it for a little while. PHILLIP Twelve bloody months, my boy, in this country. And before that, Cuba. Ever been in Cuba. ..."

Fabio Grobart, the long time senior Soviet Agent in Cuba, later called "El Maestro" by Raul Castro was also part of that scene, and was reported to have tried to keep Rolando Masferrer as a politically active member of the Cuban communist party (Partido Socialista Popular).

In Cuba of 1956-1958 Masferrer supported Batista and participated in a bloody repression of Castro forces. In the Sierra Maestra the agents placed by Rolando Masferrer, that is Los Tigres de Masferrer, exerted terror by assassination suspects they believed part of Castro's forces. However, Grobart's sleepers and Castro's agents working together prevailed and one by one Masferrer's agents or those suspected of being Masferrer loyalists were hunted down and killed. By the time of the Battle of Guisa, the Masferrer spy network was broken in the Sierra. Thus at the time and place of the battle of Guisa, the Batista forces had little information of events in the area (from unpublished manuscript "Love and War in Cuba").

Masferrer, described as still a communist in FBI files, was eventually blown up in Miami. The primary suspect but never proven director of that killing is Fidel Castro, the eternal enemy and rival of Masferrer.