Che

June 15, 2018

New Yorker staffer Anderson has written frequently about Latin America; his reporting facilitated the discovery of Che's skeletal remains three decades after they were secretly buried in Bolivia. Here he joins with award-winning Mexican political cartoonist Hernández to tell the life of revolutionary leader Che Guevara.

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September 1, 2018
The adaptation of an epic biography into a graphic volume underscores both the reach and the limitations of the graphic format.In 1997, New Yorker staff writer Anderson (The Fall of Baghdad, 2004, etc.) published a biography of Che Guevara (1928-1967) that ran to more than 800 pages, which might test the patience of even the most committed readers of subsequent generations. So the author teamed with Mexican political cartoonist Hernández for a collaboration that can, as the author explains, help "reevaluate Che Guevara through the prism of each new generation." On the visual level, it succeeds brilliantly, with the sweeping scale of the illustrations taking the measure of the man and his legacy. However, the necessary abridgement of text falls somewhere between simplifying his story enough to capture a younger readership and retaining enough of its context and complexity to satisfy those for whom this would not be an introduction. At more than 400 pages, it is around twice as long as the norm for graphic narratives, and Anderson does a solid job with the narrative arc, showing how the young ardent idealist, educated as a physician, became synonymous with heroic revolutionary commitment, which ultimately led to his falling out with Fidel Castro. No one was more committed to the Cuban revolution that the Argentine, who subsequently felt that Soviet support had made Cuba a pawn in negotiations with the United States. Guevara took his revolutionary spirit elsewhere, seemingly hoping to export it. Long after his execution in Bolivia, "Che lives" remained a rallying cry. The narrative also hints that Guevara could be ruthless in his devotion--"innocent people will have to die"--and that he abdicated his familial responsibilities. He remained a Stalinist and called his son "Little Mao." He was very much a figure of his times, and those times had a complexity that can be tougher to translate into a form that values an uncluttered simplicity.A valiant effort and a visual triumph, though the necessary abridgment compromises the depth.

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October 1, 2018
A cinematic approach chips away at the myths and misunderstandings that still surround the life of Che Guevara, the famed doctor turned revolutionary, in this in-depth graphic novel adaptation of Anderson’s exhaustive biography. Che is fleshed out as a young man whose frustration with U.S. interference throughout the Western hemisphere aligns him with anti-imperialist causes, at first in Guatemala and Mexico, famously in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Cuba, fruitlessly in a campaign in the Congo, and then tragically in Bolivia, where he was assassinated. Adding warmth to the exhaustive research drawn from letters, newspapers and official documents are Che’s writings to his mother—whose own life was upended by her son’s actions. Hernandez’s art tries to match Che’s iconic steadfastness and the weight of the story with photographic realism, but the overall effect is stiff. Yet the scope of the work meets the author’s aim to inspire renewed reflection on Che’s revolutionary ideas, and—as when Che denounces the “meddling of a foreign power” in a radio interview—holds renewed relevance as well. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, The Wylie Agency

October 15, 2018
Anderson's Che: A Revolutionary Life? (1997) is superbly realized in graphic form by Mexican artist Hern�ndez, who distills Anderson's lauded, 812-page original into just more than 400 pages of spectacularly illustrated narrative. Since his 1967 death at 39, Che has become the most recognized human image in the world, Anderson writes in his introduction, fueled by Alberto Korda's iconic photograph. Between Che's crassly commercial ubiquity?on posters, energy drinks, even diapers?and his authentically mythological cult status, Anderson attempts to convey . . . who Che had really been in life. From his comfortable Argentine birth, medical training, and peripatetic commitment to fighting capitalist U.S. imperialism to his assassination (Anderson's reporting led to the recovery of Che's remains in 1997), Anderson and Hern�ndez turn myth into man. Targeting a generation more used to expressing resistance with a click on their iPhones than taking to the streets, author and artist deftly balance Che's revolutionary idealism with his failures in leadership, his arrogance, his familial inadequacies. Affecting moments are many, including even the origin story of Che's emblematic beret.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)