First Edition. Year of publication: 1969. Print run: 10,000 copies. Cover price: 25 zł.

Table of Contents: Preface by Fidel Castro. Diary of Che Guevara. Documents. Biographical notes.

This is the only book ever translated by Ryszard Kapuściński.

“The partisans fell victim to the jungle. The jungle swallowed them. This is something you cannot imagine. You cannot know what malnutrition is. What it is to have no water for four days while marching with forty kilograms on your back. You cannot know what it is to have no boots.” Régis Debray, shortly after the death of Che Guevara.

Only relatively recently has the role of literary translators begun to receive proper recognition — they are now awarded prizes for their translations, treated almost on a par with the authors of the works they render. But until not long ago no great attention was paid to them; their names were not even mentioned in published translations. The translator’s task was limited to rendering a text from one language into another — after which all trace of them vanished. We still do not know who translated the Bible, Homer, or Shakespeare. “So it is well enough,” as Kapuściński says, “that my name was mentioned in the Polish edition of this book.” The Bolivian Diary is the only book translated by Ryszard Kapuściński.

El Diario del Che was published in Havana in June 1968. The book consists of entries from the partisan diaries of Ernesto Che Guevara, made between 7 November 1966 and 7 October of the following year. After Guevara’s death, copies of the diaries immediately reached the heads of the military junta ruling Bolivia and the CIA. In sensational circumstances, photocopies were also transmitted to Cuba, where work began on deciphering and publishing them. Fragments of the diaries were printed throughout Latin America, including in the Chilean periodical Punto Final. It was precisely this reprint that Kapuściński came across while he was in Chile as a correspondent of the Polish Press Agency. The year 1968 was another year of the Cuban Revolution, which dominated the situation on the continent. The hunt for, and ultimately the death of, the legendary partisan made a powerful impact. This is why Kapuściński occupied himself with it, wishing to bring these events closer to compatriots at home. As the writer candidly admits, the Diaries were translated partly from a desire to improve his command of Spanish.

source: kapuscinski.info