Friends in High Places
Hemingway and Cuban leader Fidel Castro were long-rumored to be friends. But they met only once, briefly at Hemingway’s annual Billfishing Tournament in May 1960. That said, Castro always had great respect for the writer.
After finishing For Whom the Bell Tolls, he went out with his third wife and two kids and killed 400 jackrabbits in a day. Castro told him this novel gave him ideas for battling the Sierra Maestro – presumably without the rabbits. Beyond that, sources suggest that Hemingway’s sole purpose for talking to Castro would have been to convince the dictator not to confiscate his property.
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