Castro back

Truly excellent biography of the Máximo Líder from Kleist, told using the conceit of it all being viewed through the eyes of the character Karl Mertens, a journalist who comes to Cuba in the Batista era to try and interview the then guerrilla Castro after reading an (historically real) interview by Herbert Matthews which appeared in the New York Times. Mertens quickly falls in love with Cuba, and also one of Castro's fighters Lara, and thus is converted to the cause as easily as his heart is won over.

The work neatly and intelligently documents Castro's younger years as a boy, showing the formative years that undoubtedly playing a massive part in shaping Castro the man. Then the early struggles fighting hit and run out of the jungle against the Batista regime propped up by the US, through to the heady heights of the early days of the revolution, and then the slow but steady decline of the communist state as US sanctions gradually destroyed Cuba's economy little by little. And throughout all the armed struggles against the regime and then afterwards as proud leader of his country, Kleist highlights the unbowed resolve of Castro to stand up to the perceived tyranny of the giant on his doorstep.

A well balanced and objective work, complimented with passionate art, Kleist has succeeded in producing an appropriately captivating biography of one of the most charismatic and fascinating leaders of the 20th Century.