Summary Of The Book Jon Lee Anderson’s biography of the iconic Che Guevara is a thoroughly researched and conclusive written work that takes the reader on a transcendent tour of Che’s life, from his Argentinean upbringing, through his early medical training days, to the commencement of his radical revolutionary outlook on life, his relationship with Fidel Castro and his premature death.
Che Guevara, apart from being a marxist revolutionary and a leader of the Guerrilla warfare, was an author, a diplomat, a social philosopher and a physician from Argentina, born in 1928. His concern for oppressed Latin America burgeoned when he decided to travel all over South America as a young student of medicine and saw firsthand the raging poverty and prevalent sickness. When he met Fidel Castro in Mexico a few years later, he affiliated himself with the 26th July Movement to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator. He was the leader of the two year long guerilla warfare that was ultimately responsible for unseating Batista. His dream of uniting Latin America with the rest of the developing world by armed revolution eventually led to his execution by Bolivian forces in 1967.
The contents of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life are a compilation of the never-seen-before personal documentations maintained by Che’s widow, official documents of the Cuban government, and in-depth interviews with Che’s companions and the people who executed him. In fact, it was during the research of the book in Bolivia that the author discovered the unprecedented location of Che’s burial. After this discovery in 1997, his body was exhumed and returned to Cuba.
About Jon Lee Anderson Jon Lee Anderson is an author, a biographer and an international reporter, born in California in 1957.
Anderson has authored The Fall of Baghdad, Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World, Iraq: The Space Between and The Lion's Grave: Dispatches from Afghanistan.
He has been employed as a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1999, and used to be a war correspondent in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel. He currently lives with his wife in Dorset, England.