[NYTr] Interviewing Fidel: A Dream Come True

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Granma Daily -August 25, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art34.html

Interviewing Fidel Castro: A Dream Come True

Book containing interviews with Fidel Castro’s 
most outstanding interviewers presented in Havana

By Sonia Sanchez

Every year about 2,000 journalists from all over the world apply for an
exclusive interview with Commander in Chief Fidel Castro. Some of the
luckiest applicants Frei Betto (Brazil), Gianni Mina (Italy), Tomas
Borge (Nicaragua) and Ignacio Ramonet (France) are now on the other
side of the microphone: they have been interviewed about this unique
experience.

The book, titled "The Lucky Interviewers of Fidel," was presented at
the "Reading in Prado" summer book fair. The author, journalist Arleen
Rodriguez Derivet, explained that she selected them "because they are
the authors of the longest, deepest and most famous written interviews
ever made with the leader of the Cuban revolution."

"By the time they accomplished their dream of interviewing Fidel –each
one in different ways and with different questions—," she added, "they
were already outstanding figures, worthy of interviewing."

Rodriguez said that this book was an idea of Minister of Culture Abel
Prieto, present at the book launch. In the book, the interviewees
narrate how these conversations with the Cuban president changed theirs
lives and point of view about different issues.