• Named as one of the non-fiction books of the summer, Shortlist, 2025

  “Carvill has a storyteller’s gift … The seriousness with which he tracks both men, and the uncanny care he shows them, is certainly worth celebrating.” - Times Literary Supplement

  “Slim, gorgeously strange… a beaut of a book.” - Shortlist

"Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway's histrionic lives both occupied the twentieth century like Moby Dick in a goldfish bowl. Finally, a book offers the rare amusement and pleasure of how their mythic paths crossed on the world's stage. There are fine moments from Carvill's book that felt like little treasures from an unpublished chapter of A Moveable Feast that finally found their way to the page." - Brin-Jonathan Butler, author of the PEN-shortlisted The Domino Diaries and RBC Taylor Prize-nominated The Grandmaster 

“An evocative and atmospheric book, full of imagination and empathy for the men at its heart and the connections between them.” - Paul Scraton, author of A Dream of White Horses, Built on Sand, and In the Pines

“Pete Carvill transforms Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles’s relationship into a pulsating portrayal of men who gave everything for their art. The historical backdrop, illuminating scenes and witty dialogue come together in this intriguing book and bring two titans of literature and cinema to life.” - Carmen Eller, author of A Year in Moscow

“Pete Carvill deftly conjures the intersecting trajectories of two of the twentieth century’s great male egos as they bloat their way from New York to Seville, from Broadway to the front lines, in a patter of wisecracking dialogue and clever turns of phrase.” - Ruby Russell, author of Doing It All

A Duel of Bulls: Hemingway and Welles in Love and War tells the mostly true story of the ‘friendship’ between Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles.

The Hemingway-Welles connection begins in 1937 when the pair first meet in New York where Welles is hired to do the narration for the Hemingway-written film The Spanish Earth. A fistfight later, the pair begin a friendship that lasts over 25 years until Hemingway’s death. Welles then spends the rest of his life grappling with Hemingway’s vision of Spain.

Biteback’s official page for A Duel of Bulls: Hemingway and Welles in Love and War.

Pre-order A Duel of Bulls: Hemingway and Welles in Love and War on Amazon.

Find A Duel of Bulls: Hemingway and Welles in Love and War on Goodreads.

The bibliography for A Duel of Bulls: Hemingway and Welles in Love and War.