BOOKS

Castro Convertible?

A dictated memoir

Of the many scenarios about the direction of political life in the U.S. in the 1990s (they range from Armageddon to more arbitrage), one of the more persuasive forecasts a revival of left-wing activism, particularly among the mainstream Christian denominations. The Sanctuary Movement is one sign of this; perhaps the decision of Simon and Schuster (a publishing house not exactly famous for bringing out books likely to lose money) to issue a series of interviews Fidel Castro gave to the radical Brazilian priest Frei Betto is another.

Fidel and Religion itself is a political event of sorts, representing as it does Castro's new shift toward an alliance with radical Catholics in Latin America. But the interviews in the book are scarcely restricted to liberation theology. Rather, the book is as close as Castro may get to an autobiography. Almost free-associating, the maximum leader touches on topics as varied as his Jesuit schooling and his recollections of his comrades-in-arms. Of Che Guevara, Castro observes, "I'm a better cook," and after a while readers can be forgiven for feeling they have stumbled into a great Latin-American novel—a work of magic realism in which a baroque tyrant soliloquizes. Father Betto is no help, and his questions are moist with admiration. Water is indeed a big theme with Betto. The last lines of the book read as follows: "I was swept by a wave of fraternal admiration for Fidel and offered up a silent prayer of thanks to the Almighty Father." Glug, glug. DAVID RIEFF