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REVISED AND UPDATED THROUGHOUT
Jon Lee Anderson's definitive and acclaimed biography of Che Guevara manages to transcend the myth of Che and portray in unrivaled detail a complicated human being.
In his quest to discover who the real Che was, Anderson moved to Havana and gained unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Che's widow. He spent months with Che's old friends in Argentina, where Che was born into an aristocratic family and went to medical school. He interviewed Che's comrades from battles fought in Cuba and the Congo and Bolivia, and he talked to figures on both sides of the Cold War, in Moscow and in the CIA. The book completes the epic saga of an extraordinary life.
In 1995, Anderson broke the story of how Che's body had been secretly hidden after his assassination in Bolivia in 1967. He recounts how the body was finally recovered, thirty years after the murder, brought back to Cuba, and interred in the place Che had won his most famous battle in the Cuban revolution. Meticulously researched, Anderson's book reveals many details of Che's life that were long cloaked in secrecy and intrigue.
“Superb . . . Mr. Anderson does a masterly job in evoking Che’s complex character, in separating the man from the myth . . .” - The New York Times Book Review
“Excellent . . . admirably honest and staggeringly researched . . . It is unlikely that after Anderson’s exhaustive contribution, much more will be learned about Guevara.” - Los Angeles Times
“Che’s ideal, that curious mixture of resoluteness and recklessness . . . is brilliantly evoked in Jon Lee Anderson’s massive biography which traces, with exacting precision, the avatars of Che’s epic life . . . . The portrait is now as complete as it will ever be.” - The Times Literary Supplement (London)
“An enduring achievement. It is hard to imagine that any [other biography] will match the volume and detail of research here…. Guevara’s victories and failures, equally spectacular, are part of our common history….Che lives, not only in this book, but in the world.” –The Boston Globe
