The intimate and highly revealing life story of the world's
longest-serving, most charismatic, and controversial head of state in
modern times.
Fidel Castro was a dictatorial pariah to some and a hero and inspiration
for many of the world's poor, defiantly charting an independent and
revolutionary path for Cuba over nearly half a century. Numerous
attempts were made to get Castro to tell his own story. But only in the
twilight of his years was he prepared to set out the details of his
remarkable biography for the world to read before his death in 2016.
This book is nothing less than his living testament.
In these pages, Castro narrates a compelling chronicle that spans the
harshness of his elementary school teachers; the early failures of the
revolution; his intense comradeship with Che Guevara and their
astonishing, against-all-odds victory over the dictator Batista; the
Cuban perspective on the Bay of Pigs and the ensuing missile crisis; the
active role of Cuba in African independence movements (especially its
large military involvement in fighting apartheid South Africa in
Angola); his relations with prominent public figures such as Boris
Yeltsin, Pope John Paul II, and Saddam Hussein; and his dealings with no
less than ten successive American presidents, from Eisenhower to George
W. Bush.
Castro talks proudly of increasing life expectancy in Cuba; of the half
million students in Cuban universities; and of the training of seventy
thousand Cuban doctors nearly half of whom work abroad, assisting the
poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He confronts a number of thorny
issues, including democracy and human rights, discrimination toward
homosexuals, and the presence of the death penalty on Cuban statute
books. Along the way he shares intimacies about more personal matters:
the benevolent strictness of his father, his successful attempt to give
up cigars, his love of Ernest Hemingway's novels, and his calculation
that by not shaving he saves up to ten working days each year.
Drawing on more than one hundred hours of interviews with Ignacio
Ramonet, a knowledgeable and trusted interlocutor, this spoken
autobiography will stand as the definitive record of an extraordinary
life lived in turbulent times.
