Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who took power of the country during the Cuban Revolution in 1959, died on Friday, November 25 at age ninety, NPR reported.

Known alternately as a dictator and a hero, Castro has been a prominent international figure. But he has also been tied to several literary figures, which more or less tells a story of his legacy.

Last week, Lit Hub reported that Castro was “an avid reader,” and related a brief history of Castro’s friendships with Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Neruda, and Gabriel García Márquez. Of these, Castro appeared to have the strongest relationship with García Márquez, who he called “the most powerful man in Latin America,” and especially admired him upon the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The two had become so close that García Márquez had Castro read his manuscripts before their publication. A book about their friendship reveals that García Márquez once told Playboy that Castro “is a very good reader with a really astonishing capacity for concentration—and also because he’s so careful. In many of the books he reads, he quickly finds contradictions from one page to another. ... One gets the impression that he really likes the world of literature, he feels very comfortable in it, and he enjoys writing his speeches very carefully, which are becoming more frequent. One time, not without a hint of melancholy, he said to me: ‘In my next life, I want to be a writer.’”

But The Paris Review contributor James Scott Linville related an account of an encounter between Hemingway, his editor George Plimpton, and political prisoners at La Cabana prison in Havana that could make one’s hair curl.

If you are interested in reading up on Cuba’s complicated legacy, check out NPR’s list of books, movies, and music on the island’s culture.

Photo Credit: The Paris Review.