In April 1965, Che Guevara set out clandestinely from Havana to Congo to head a force of some 200 veteran Cuban soldiers to assist the African liberation movement against Belgian colonialists, four years after the assassination of the democratically elected socialist president of Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Because this diary deals with what Che admits was a ''failure,'' he examines every painful detail about what went wrong in order to draw constructive lessons for planned future guerrilla movements. Congo Diary gives us Che''s brutal honesty and his story-telling ability as he recounts this fascinating episode of guerrilla warfare unblinkingly and without sugar coating or jargon.