If it’s not censorious religious loonies, it’s the PC Red Guards fucking with fiction. It was only a matter of time before they came after Hemingway.

Would-be readers of Hemingway are now warned about the “language” and “attitudes” contained in his writing, and alerted to the novelist’s “cultural representations”.

A disclaimer printed in the latest edition of his debut novel The Sun Also Rises – considered among the greats of the 20th century – states that publishers decided not to censor the book, but makes clear that this does not constitute an “endorsement” of Hemingway’s original text.

Hemingway’s collection of short stories, Men Without Women, now carries an almost identical warning, differing only by alerting would-be readers to the fact the book was published in 1927.

The books were reissued in 2022 and 2023 by the Penguin Random House imprint Vintage.

The Sun Also Rises is considered by some to be Hemingway’s best work, and follows a coterie of “Lost Generation” American expats in Paris in the 1920s. They travel to the bullfighting in Pamplona while dealing with romantic jealousy within their group.

The novel, based directly on one of Hemingway’s own trips to Spain with compatriots, explores the new spirit of the age, sexuality, violence and the “tough guy” author’s view of masculinity.

His follow-up story collection, Men Without Women, contains tales on subjects from Hemingway’s passions of bullfighting, skiing and boxing, to abortion, drug-use and war.

Professor Richard Bradford, author of the 2018 Hemingway biography, The Man Who Wasn’t There, said “The publisher’s comments would be hilarious, were they not also alarming.

“They state that despite reprinting the book unaltered they do not wish to endorse the ‘cultural representations or language contained herein’.

“This would be understandable had they brought out a new translation of Mein Kampf.

“They seem to imply that, because it’s a literary classic, they’re willing to take a deep breath and warn readers with delicate sensibilities that something in it might unsettle them.”