This image is the cover for the book Loving Che

Loving Che

In this “evocative first novel,” an elderly woman looks back on the world of revolutionary Cuba as she recalls her intimate, secret love affair with Ernesto “Che” Guevara (Publishers Weekly).

A young Cuban woman has been searching in vain for details of her birth mother. All she knows of her past is that her grandfather fled the turbulent Havana of the 1960s for Miami with her in tow, and that pinned to her sweater—possibly by her mother—were a few treasured lines of a Pablo Neruda poem. These facts remain her only tenuous links to her history, until a mysterious parcel arrives in the mail. Inside the soft, worn box are layers of writings and photographs. Fitting these pieces together with insights she gleans from several trips back to Havana, the daughter reconstructs a life of her mother, her youthful affair with the dashing, charismatic Che Guevara and the child she bore by the enigmatic rebel.

Loving Che is a brilliant recapturing of revolutionary Cuba, the changing social mores, the hopes and disappointments, the excitement and terror of the times. It is also an erotic fantasy, a glimpse into the private life of a mythic public figure, and an exquisitely crafted meditation on memory, history, and storytelling. Finally, Loving Che is a triumphant unveiling of how the stories we tell about others ultimately become the story of ourselves.

“A moving novel from a writer to watch.” —Publishers Weekly

“Inventive and hypnotic . . . [An] artful and restless examination of the exile soul.” —Los Angeles Times

“[Menendez] captures Cuba’s potential, its desperation and decay, and also its dark humor.” —The New York Times

“The writing is consistently beautiful. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

Ana Menéndez

ANA MENENDEZ is the daughter of Cuban exiles. She worked as a journalist for six years with The Miami Herald and The Orange County Register in California. She is a graduate of NYU's creative writing program where she was a New York Times fellow. Menendez lives in Istanbul with her husband, a New York Times reporter. Her collection of short stories, In Cuba I was a German Shepherd, has been translated into eight languages. Loving Che is her first novel.ADRIANA SANANES has been a leading actress with the major New York Hispanic theatre companies. Her performances earned her the Princess Grace Foundation's Theatre Fellowship, a Best Actress Award at the International Festival in El Paso, a Hispanic Critics Association Award, and a Hispanic Association of Latin Actors Award. She narrated the Oscar-nominated and Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning documentary Children of FateEILEEN STEVENS has performed at The Public Theater, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Theater for a New Audience. She lives in New York.

Grove Press