Cirrus@Austlit

'Pivotal to Che’s Last Embrace, Nicholas Hasluck’s fourteenth novel, is the marvellously elusive figure of Marvic Laredo. Descended from a group of Australians with utopian dreams who settled in Paraguay in the 1890s, Laredo, as one of the “boy soldiers” in the Chaco War between that country and Bolivia (1932 to 1935), had gained the moniker “el Australiano”. More importantly, Hasluck assigns him the role of propagandist and journalist for Che Guevara during the attempt to radicalise Latin America during the 1960s. Further to this, we are told that thirty years after Guevara’s ultimate ambush and subsequent death at the Bolivian village of La Higuera in 1967, Laredo had written a commemorative article devoted to the revolutionary leader. There also exists an unpublished draft of his account of Guevara’s last days and final hours. This is of particular interest since it suggests a revolutionary force weakened and divided. It also hints at betrayal.' (Introduction)

'Reading Anna Funder’s book Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life, about George Orwell and his wife Eileen, feels like listening to a clairvoyant seeking meaning and explanation from the tea leaves and dregs left in a stormy teacup after a seance. Perhaps Funder’s “sincere hope” that the biographers of Orwell (including Bernard Crick and Gordon Bowker, who are dead) will “embrace” Wifedom “in the spirit in which is intended” will be fulfilled if the spirit behind Wifedom materialises. But I could not embrace that “spirit” because it did not materialise for me; it is still deep within Funder, deeper than she is saying.' (Introduction)