Fidel Castro is like one of those immortal characters from a novel by his friend Gabriel García Márquez. While most politicians, at best, can hope to measure their careers in years, he seems to defy time and the course of history.

He has overcome the collapse of the Soviet Union, which destroyed international socialism and wiped out an entire generation of his fellow communist leaders. He has survived countless CIA assassination plots, seen off 10 US presidents and may yet witness the arrival of an 11th. Even now, in his dotage, he wears his trademark olive green fatigues and keeps a loaded pistol on his hip in case the Americans are tempted to have one more go.

In failing health and after five decades ruling Cuba, he remains an inspiration to a new breed of “revolutionaries” around the globe.

In the 100 hours of transcribed interviews that make up this book, Castro casts some fascinating light on to his rise from a privileged background in rural Cuba to his days as a student radical and finally his victorious armed revolution when he and Che Guevara overthrew the Batista regime on New Year's Day 1959.

In the intervening period he has met almost everyone who mattered — with the exception of his “Yankee” neighbours. He liked Saddam Hussein, thought Tony Blair “haughty” and has felt betrayed by every Kremlin leader from Nikita Khrushchev to Vladimir Putin. But this rather clumsy biography should not be the last word on the Cuban leader. The question-and-answer style is too awkward and the interviewer, Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, too uncritical.

Although Castro is challenged about Cuba's appalling human rights record, he is allowed to get away with outrageous claims such as denying that there is a personality cult in Cuba and claiming that his salary amounts to only £15 a month. And criticism of the undemocratic nature of the West is rich coming from a dictator who recently handed power over to his brother Raul.

Castro never fully recovered from the gastrointestinal surgery he had last year and is probably in the final stages of his life. Another biographer must now rise to the challenge of completing a more rounded portrait of this extraordinary figure than My Life does.

As the comandante himself might put it: “La lutta continua.”

My Life by Fidel Castro

Allen Lane, £20

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