Che Mon Amour

A Novel

The legendary Comandante Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna, known as Che Guevara, has died in Bolivia. French journalist Monique Cottillard is given the job of identifying the body. When she, accompanied by her Italian colleague, stands before the body of Che, she feels suddenly faint. She knows this guerillero all too well. She has hated him and loved him – loved him so much that she would have given her life for him. Che was married, but he had a few affairs on the side – after all, he was a typical South American macho man. So macho in fact, in a hurtful and arrogant way, that at times Monique really wanted to kill him. Often she determined she was never going to see him again. But whenever he wrote her one of his encrypted notes, she would take the next plane to whatever place he happened to be. Only on Cuba had she never visited him – there he was too well known, and the walls had ears. Werner Ortmüller was born in Ebeleben, Thuringia, in 1945. Since 1948 he has been living in Giessen, Mittelhessen. He worked as a construction engineer. For many years he was the elected workers’ representative on the local Staff Council. He was involved in the setting up of various civic initiatives with the aim of promoting humane standards in municipal planning. From 1973 to 1996 he was active in local politics. A part time lyric poet, he is a member of the Karl Liebknecht Working Group, which awarded him its Peace Prize in the year 1993.