The Cycle Diaries with Julian Sayarer

Long-term friend of the shop Julian Sayarer returns with The Cycle Diaries, a recreation of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s 1952 journey through Latin America by bicycle.

Julian is not only an incredibly evocative travel-writer, he is also one of the most creative, open and though-provoking writers on the state of the modern world, social justice and inequity. The Cycle Diaries takes him on a 10,000km cycling adventure from the Argentine Pampa to the Amazon River, bringing Guevara’s Diaries into a new century with his desire to understand a continent shaped by war and empire.

Following their past conversations at the shop over the years about the award-winning Interstate, Julian’s last book, Turkiye and Iberia published by our own imprint Fox, Finch & Tepper, Nic is delighted to chat to him once again about this incredible new publication.

Can’t make it to the event? Order a signed and dedicated copy here.

About the book:

From the emptiness of the Argentine Pampa, to the vast Atacama Desert and the mighty Amazon River, the road reveals the story of Guevara himself, and of indigenous Mapuche communities shut inside reserves, lumber wars, copper mines, coca plantations and oil pipelines.

Bringing the Diaries into a new century, Sayarer explores what has changed and what has stayed the same, taking in the history of the Cold War and the colonial conquest that came before it. His journey shows also that global politics can never truly be left behind, introducing him to socialist pensioners who have retired outside of the US and the reach of the FBI, and refugees of war trying to treat their trauma with ayahuasca. Meanwhile, meetings with Palestinian diplomats and a distant diaspora offer a reminder of events that are impossible to escape even half a world away.

The altitude of the Andes and Altiplano, and roaring headwinds of Patagonia, make for a seldom easy ten thousand kilometre trip, but Sayarer is propelled by a desire to understand a century and a continent shaped by war and empire, and finds in the pedal strokes of adventure a small act of resistance: the simple freedom of life on two wheels.

“We need writers who will go all the way for a story, and tell it with fire. Sayarer is a marvellous example” HORATIO CLARE

About the author:

JULIAN SAYARER cycled a half dozen times across Europe to his second nation of Türkiye before before breaking a world record for a circumnavigation by bicycle, and going on to write Life Cycles (2014). He is the winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Writing Award for Interstate (2016), an account of hitchhiking through middle America, and is the author of Messengers (2016), All at Sea (2017), Fifty Miles Wide (2020), Ondaatje Prize-longlisted Iberia (2021), and Türkiye (2023). Julian combines a background in political science to create a critically acclaimed travel writing style – politics at roadsides. In this 12mph view of the world in passing, he uses human stories and journeys to document global issues for a broad audience. His writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the Guardian, Financial Times, Aeon Magazine, and in numerous cycling publications.