Guevara is thirty years dead this month, shot at the age of 39 by Bolivian soldiers who had taken him prisoner and who apparently acted under orders from higher authority. He was one of the international heroes of the Sixties, when revolution was not only acceptable but fashionable - at least at a distance - and Castro's Cuba was the essential place for young, idealistic people to visit. His proper name was Ernesto Guevara Lynch, and he was born into an Argentinian family which had land but little money. From early in life Che was a revolutionary, in various parts of the Latin-American theatre, but he was also a medical doctor, an amateur economist, and after his fashion a social thinker, whose strong personality impressed itself on many people.
Guevara was married twice, and his widow by his second marriage is still alive and was interviewed for this biography. His role in Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution was considerable, but Guevara needed the stimulus of constant revolution and moved on to Bolivia, where his guerrilla campaign proved abortive and he was captured and shot by the military. A lot of recently uncovered facts seem to have gone into this book, which is 800 pages long.
B.F.