The Ribs of Rosinante

Richard Gott writes about the nine (or so) lives of Che Guevara

  • Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson
    Bantam, 814 pp, £25.00, April 1997, ISBN 0 593 03403 1
  • Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara by Jorge Castañeda, translated by Marina Castañeda
    Bloomsbury, 480 pp, £20.00, October 1997, ISBN 0 7475 3334 2

I met Che Guevara in November 1963 at a reception in the gardens of the Soviet Embassy in Havana, one of those diplomatic occasions held every year to celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution. He strode in after midnight, accompanied by a coterie of friends, bodyguards and hangers-on, wearing his trademark black beret, his shirt open to the waist. He was unbelievably beautiful. People stopped whatever they were doing and stared at the Revolution made flesh. ‘He had an incalculable enchantment that came completely naturally,’ Julia Costenla, an Argentine journalist told Jon Lee Anderson when he was researching his biography of Guevara. ‘If he entered a room, everything began revolving around him.’

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Other recent books consulted in the writing of this article:

The Fall of Che Guevara: A Tale of Soldiers, Spies and Diplomats by Henry Ryan (Oxford, 240 pp., £23, due March 1998, o 19 511879 o).

Pombo, a Man of Che’s ‘Guerrilla’: With Che Guevara in Bolivia 1966-8 by Harry Viilegas (Pathfinder, 365 pp., £39 and £14.45, 2 August, o 87348 834 2).

Vie et mort de la révolution cubaine by Dariel Alarcón Ramírez (Fayard, 298 pp., 130 frs,9 April 1996, 2 213 59638 7).

Che Guevara by Jean Cormier, with Hilda Guevara and Alberto Granard (Editions du Rocher, 444 pp., 132 frs, 8 August 1995, 2 268 01967 5).

Guevara, also Known as Che by Ingacio Taibo II (St Martins, 670 pp., $35,13 November, 0312 15539 5).

Che, Ernesto Guevara: Une légende du siécle by Pierre Kalfon (Seuil, 628 pp., 148 frs, 13 May, 202 013694 5).

Loués soient nos seigneurs: Une éducation politique by Régis Debray(Gallimard, 592 pp., 140 frs,16 April, 2 07 074558 9).

L’Occhio del Barracuda: Autobiografia di un comunista by Saverio Tutino (Feltrinelli, 284 pp., 35,000L, January 1995, 8 807 07029 4).