Book excerpt: Che Guevara is something of a symbol in the West, a representative of Sixties counterculture and the face adorning the T-shirts of a million student radicals. But in the rest of the world he is something else: a charismatic revolutionary who redrew the political map of Latin America and gave hope to those resisting colonialism everywhere. Lucia Alvarez de Toledo comes from the same social milieu as Che Guevara; born and raised in Buenos Aires, she was at school while he attended university, and then as a journalist she closely followed his meteoric political rise. As a result she is able to put him into context like few others among his biographers, dispelling numerous popular misconceptions and revealing aspects to his life which have been missed before. Based on interviews with Che's family and those who knew him intimately, this is an accessible biography that concentrates on the man rather than the icon. With the political developments in Latin America in the twenty-first century, Guevara's influence can be seen to be even greater than it was during his lifetime.