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Che Guevara

Nick Caistor

'Che Guevara was the symbol for an age that rarely understood him or appreciated his commitment to social causes yet was quick to invoke the mantra “Che lives.” VERDICT: A readable, interesting, and highly recommended biography for all readers.'

Library Journal

 

‘At last, at last, a biography of Che Guevara for grown-ups! Nick Caistor, well known for years as a commentator on Latin America for the BBC, has produced a study of a man who is all too often treated either as a plaster saint incapable of doing wrong or as some devil from the deepest pit of Marxism-Leninism. Caistor portrays him with sympathy and elegance as what he was, a human being with doubts and weaknesses which he combined with a devotion to the world’s poor.’

Hugh O’Shaughnessy, journalist and broadcaster

 

Argentine by birth, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara came to embody the spirit of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro. Guevara spent two years fighting in the sierras of Cuba, and after the revolutionaries’ victory became one of the leading members of the government as well as one of Castro’s closest and most controversial associates. Also an important writer, Guevara developed ideas about how to spread anti-imperialist revolution throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. He made a huge contribution to theories of socialism, predicting the emergence of a ‘new man’ who would represent what for him were the humanist values of the Cuban Revolution. His later years took him to Africa, in search of another guerrilla war, and finally to a tragic end in the mountains of Bolivia.

In some ways a vulnerable and enigmatic individual, Che Guevara was nevertheless someone who showed few contradictions between his life and his writing, and his example continues to win admirers among new generations anxious to explore ways of changing their world. In this short, accessible biography Nick Caistor explores the life and ideas of an iconic revolutionary.

 

About the author
Nick Caistor is a former BBC Latin American analyst who writes and broadcasts widely on Latin America and Cuba.