Che Guevara: A Life

by Nick Caistor

An accessible and well-researched biography that explores the life and ideas of an iconic revolutionary. “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 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 constantly developed ideas about how to spread anti-imperialist revolution throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Guevara made a huge contribution to theories of socialism, predicting the emergence of a “new man” who would represent what for him were humanist values of the Cuban revolution. His later years took him to Africa, in search of another guerilla war, and finally to a tragic end in the mountains of Bolivia. Che Guevara was 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.

Genres: Biography

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Nick Caistor is a British journalist, non-fiction author, and translator of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He has translated Cesar Aira, Paulo Coelho, Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Marsé, and Manuel Vázquez Montalban, and he has twice won the Valle-Inclán Prize for translation. He regularly contributes to Radio 4, the BBC World Service, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian. He lives in Norwich, England.

Reviews

[Saudamini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Honest. Caistor preserves the glory of this man while never missing out his more human weaknesses.