The Death of Che Guevara: (Vintage Contemporaries)

In his critically acclaimed epic first novel, Jay Cantor, author of Krazy Kat and Great Neck, draws on history, myth, and his own prodigious imagination to take on the life and death of revolutionary icon Che Guevara. In his now famous progress through modern times, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the scion of a liberal Argentine family, abandoned a medical career to become a revolutionary. A fiery comrade of Fidel Castro’s who joined him in overthrowing the Cuban government of Baptista, Che later broke with Castro to lead a guerrilla movement in Bolivia. As the novel charts Che’s bold evolution, it also offers an incisive look at Latin America’s revolutionary struggles, an exploration of the nature of truth and storytelling, and a brilliant exegesis of the psychology of radical activisim.

About the Author :
Jay Cantor is the author of two other novels, Great Neck and Krazy Kat, and two books of essays, The Space Between: Literature and Politics and On Giving Birth to One’s Own Mother. A MacArthur Prize fellow, Cantor teaches at Tufts University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife Melinda Marble, and their daughter, Grace.

Review :
“A remarkable feat of the sympathetic imagination. . . . A lucid, compassionate work . . . a profuse and powerful novel.” --The New York Times “For the first time, an American imagination has joined in the dialogue wielded by Garcia Marquez, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa and others. . . . An extraordinary novel. . . . .An impressive achievement.” —The Los Angeles Times “Clearly the work of an unusual literary intelligence . . . An immense, audacious and often brilliant first novel.” --The New York Review of Books "A brave, mammoth fiction, shrewd and romantic in conception, dazzling and post-modernist in construction..One is left with a pan-American legend that Jay Cantor has reworked into a passionate haunting.” --The Boston Globe “Ambitious and provocative. . . . An impressive achievement.” –Dallas Morning News “A fine book. . . . Cantor has produced in his fiction a truly realistic Che Guevara.” –St. Petersburg Times “Intriguing because it both penetrates and enshrines the aura that was Che, melding fact and fancy. . . . [Cantor] immerses himself, capturing the flavor and feel of the small villages, the heat of the hungle, the oppression. . . . . It is a book about a man whose life may have been in vain . . . but it also about an enigma, and it forms a decent tribute to the person who was that riddle.” –Indianapolis Star “Create[s] a dense, impassioned portrait of Castro’s revolution.” –Vanity Fair “This big novel is so lush, so intelligent, and arises so deeply from within the depths of the author’s knowledge of Guevara that serious readers will be eager to spread the word about it. . . . Guevara is evoked splendidly . . . The final picture is amazing in its intimacy.” –Booklist “A profound, immensely powerful book. . . . The dilemmas of Che Guevara’s life in the end become the dilemmas of political action and conscience in this century.” –Frank Bidart “Complex but wholly convincing. . . . What is unique here is that Jay Cantor has brought his North American sensibility to [the] celebration–and he seems right at home.” --Newsday “Rich in political/psychological interplay and imaginative detail. . . . The prose is assured, intensely focused.” –Kirkus Reviews “A thrilling, masterfully written novel, especially in its portrayals of political desire.” –Richard Poirier