If you'd like a dedicated copy, please select a signed edition and tell us the name for the dedication. We'll post signed & dedicated copies after our event with Julian on Tuesday 15th September, 2026.
The Cycle Diaries
Julian Sayarer
£25.00
Mr B's review
‘Boiling over with anger and fear for the “chaos of a collapsing world” in Palestine, Julian sets off against his better instincts in the tyre tracks of revolutionary Che Guevara. After time absorbing Lima and Buenos Aires, he heads South into the brutal headwinds of Patagonia and then up through the Andes of Chile, Peru and Bolivia before a dramatic and troubled final stint in Cuba. As ever with Julian’s journeying and writing, the landscapes are spectacular but the narrative is truly driven by the encounters, the conversations and the thinking-time, sometimes overthinking time by his own admission, the road gives him. In each city he finds a new home-from-home bar, and takes the pulse of place through discussions of local and global politics and injustices. In between he absorbs food, shelter, kindness and an incredibly diverse range of outlooks from those he encounters amongst the mountains, lakes, deserts and rivers of the vast South America. Inspiring, thought-provoking and brilliantly exhausting travel-writing.’ – Nic
Description
Armed with a copy of The Motorcyle Diaries, Julian Sayarer sets out on his bicycle in a quest to follow the 1952 journey of Ernesto “Che” Guevara through Latin America.
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
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