Letters to Che Guevara

This is not a new—or old—biography of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, Che. If anything new can be said about Che, I don't believe it's at the level of facts. Nothing that could be added to his trajectory—whether his youthful travels, his time in Guatemala, the guerrilla war in Cuba, the Cuban government, Africa, or finally Bolivia, or even the discovery of his buried body—would change the meaning of his life. If we can extract anything more from his life, it will be by reflecting on its meaning, its relevance today, and what has become of his ideas thirty years later. Doing so by addressing Che himself, more than a literary expedient, is a way of attempting to dialogue with an era, with ideas that continue to inhabit the imagination, the social practice—or both—of a part of that generation. It is a way of settling accounts with the dreams of a generation that sought to "storm heaven."