Fidel Castro is perhaps the most charismatic and controversial head of state in modern times. A dictatorial pariah to some, he has become a hero and inspiration for many of the world’s poor, defiantly charting an independent and revolutionary path for Cuba over nearly halfa century.

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.

  ’Fidel... looked at me with mischievous eyes, and with a touch of irony asked me, ’Do you really want to waste your time talking to me? Don’t you have anything more important to do?’ Of course I said I really did, and I didn’t, respectively. Dozens of journalists from all over the world, among them the most famous and respected, had spent years waiting for a chance to talk to Fidel. For a professional journalist, could there be any interview more important than this one--with a man who was unquestionably one of the most significant figures of the last sixty years? Is Castro not the longest-serving head of state in the world today?

"He has had to deal with ten U.S. presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II). He has had personal and sometimes friendly relationships with some of the world’s most important leaders since 1945 (Nehru, Nasser, Tito, Khrushchev, Olof Palme, Willy Brandt, Ben Bella, Boumedienne, Ararat, Indira Gandhi, Salvador Allende, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Mitterrand, Jiang Zemin, John Paul II, King Juan Carlos of Spain, Nelson Mandela... ), and he has known some of the major intellectuals, artists, and personalities of our time (Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Arthur Miller, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Amado, Oswaldo Guayasamin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Julio Cortazar, Jose Saramago, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Eduardo Galeano, Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky, and many, many others).

"Fidel Castro, so prolix in his speeches, has given very few long interviews, and in fifty years only four such conversations have been published After almost a year of waiting, I was told that he had agreed to my request, that he would have his fifth long conversation with me, and it has turned out to be the longest and most complete of them all."

Map of Cuba

A Hundred Hours with Fidel

The Childhood of a Leader

The Forging of a Rebel

Entering Politics

The Assault on the Moncada Barracks

The Backdrop of the Revolution

’History Will Absolve Me’

Che Guevara

In the Sierra Maestra

Lessons from a Guerrilla War

Revolution: First Steps, First Problems

The Conspiracies Begin

The Bay of Pigs/Playa Gir6n

The ’Cuban Missile Crisis’ of October i96z

The Death of Che Guevara

Cuba and Africa

The Emigration Crises

The Collapse of the Soviet Union

The Ochoa Case and the Death Penalty

Cuba and Neoliberal Globatization

President Jimmy Carter’s Visit

The Arrests of Dissidents in March 2003

The Hijackings in April zoo3

Cuba and Spain

Fidel and France

Latin America

Cuba Today

Summing up a Life and a Revolution

After Fidel, What?

A Note on the Text and the Translation

Some Key Dates in the Life of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution (1926-2007)

Notes

Index