Che Guevara

In writing this portrait of Che Guevara, the author was given access to Che's family and friends. Ernesto Che Guevara, an Argentinian doctor of middle-class parents, rose to fight with Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution, and later tried to spread that revolution in other countries in Latin America and Africa. Jorge Castaneda investigated archives in Argentina, Mexico, Cuba and Russia, and has interviewed Che's family and associates in order to paint this detailed portrait of a man who became a myth and the symbol of an epoch, but who died ingloriously in a Bolivian jungle while trying to foment another revolution. Che Guevara stands as one of the great cultural figures of the 20th century. His influence was felt beyond the circles of his ideology and politics, and the countries and regions where he fought, thought and died. This book is both a reassessment of Che's 'career and an enlightened portrait of the man: his mother, his marriages, his narcissism, his wilful determination, his rage. Above all, he emerges as an idealist of unique historical timing, who most closely embodied the deeper meaning of the 1968 student rising, whose last call for a modern Utopia still resonates at the close of a century bereft of Utopias.