Argentine by birth, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara came to embody the spirit of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro. Guevara spent two years fighting in the sierras of Cuba, and after the revolutionaries’ victory became one of the leading members of the government as well as one of Castro’s closest and most controversial associates. Also an important writer, Guevara developed ideas about how to spread anti-imperialist revolution throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. He made a huge contribution to theories of socialism, predicting the emergence of a ‘new man’ who would represent what for him were the humanist values of the Cuban Revolution. His later years took him to Africa, in search of another guerrilla war, and finally to a tragic end in the mountains of Bolivia.

In some ways a vulnerable and enigmatic individual, Che Guevara was nevertheless someone who showed few contradictions between his life and his writing, and his example continues to win admirers among new generations anxious to explore ways of changing their world. In this short, accessible biography Nick Caistor explores the life and ideas of an iconic revolutionary.