The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America

Easy Rider meets Das Kapital - The Times It's true: Marxists just wanna have fun. - The Guardian In January 1952,two young men form Buenos Aires set out to explore South America on 'La Poderosa', the Powerful One; a 50CC Norton. One of them was the twenty-three-year-old Che Guevara. Written eight years before the Cuban Revolution, these are Che's diaries - full of disasters and discoveries, high drama, low comedy and laddish improvisations. During his travels through Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela, Che's main concerns are where the next drink is coming from, where the next bed is to be found and who might be around to share it. Within a decade the whole world would know his name. These diaries reveal the human side of the man who was to become a legend. What distinguishes these diaries is that they reveal a human side to El Che which historians have successfully managed to suppress...A joy to read from start to finish. - Financial Times Politically-correct revolutionary hero? Perhaps a few years later, but in this account Che Guevara comes over as one of the lads. - Bike News Political incorrectness galore...this book should do much to humanise the image of a man who found his apotheosis as a late Sixties cultural icon. It is also, incidentally, a remarkably good travel book about South America. - Scotsman