The Autobiography of Fidel Castro
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- $30.99
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
"A compelling fictional personage-by turns arrogant, funny, pompous, lewd, self-absorbed and self-deluding."—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
An audacious “biography” of the ex-president of Cuba told in Castro’s own outrageous, bombastic voice. Prize-winning author and journalist Norberto Fuentes was once a revolutionary: a writer with privileged access to Fidel Castro’s inner circle during some the most challenging years of the revolution. But in the late 1990s, as the regime began sending its oldest comrades to the firing squad, he became A Man Who Knew Too Much. Escaping a death sentence and now living in exile, Fuentes has written a brilliant, satirical, and utterly captivating “autobiography” of the Cuban leader—in Fidel’s own arrogant and seductive language—discussing everything from Castro’s early sexual experiences in Birán to his true feelings about Che Guevara and his philosophy on murder, legacy, and state secrets. Critics have long admired Fuentes’s writing; one U.S. article called him “Norman Mailer’s Cuban pen pal.” Akin to Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, or Edmund Morris’s Dutch, this wickedly entertaining, true-to-life masterpiece is as imaginative and outsized as Castro himself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fuentes, an old friend of Fidel Castro who escaped a death sentence in 1990s Cuba and now lives in exile in Florida, delivers a clever, ballsy and colorful faux autobiography of the Communist icon. "With this book," Fuentes-as-Castro writes, "I am not trying to reject anything or defend myself, but to leave behind an interpretation from my own hands, or rather, from my own mouth, of the events in which I am the protagonist." Castro comes across as megalomaniacal and charming, his hilarious bravado a perfect complement to a profoundly unreliable narrator. Castro reflects on everything from the murder of his first political rival and his campaign against Batista to the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis to the almost present day. Though peppered with gossipy asides, the story remains strong, mostly linear and always captivating. Fuentes tells Castro's story without questioning himself, and is so convincing that readers may forget this is fiction.
