(Image source: Granma International)

BY STEVEN SPARKMAN

ANCHOR ZACH TOOMBS

Former Cuban president Fidel Castro made a rare public appearance this weekend to promote a new book on his life. Here’s HLN.

“A Cuban newspaper says he just released a memoir that covers his life before he took power. He says he wanted to have it done before his memories fade away. Castro is 85 years old.”

The book is called A Guerrilla of Time, and follows Castro’s life from his childhood to the eve of Cuba’s revolution. Its two volumes total nearly 1,000 pages, and are written as a dialogue between Castro and a journalist.

RT writes -- this is the first time Castro has been seen in public for nearly 10 months.

“The world has not seen him since the closing session of the Communist Party Congress in April last year. Yet he was present throughout the launch of the book, which reportedly lasted over six hours.”

State media were quick to mention how lively Castro looked, and report he told jokes and conversed with the crowd. But a reporter tells the BBC it was a tightly-controlled event.

“You say this was a public appearance, but it was an appearance before an invited audience, and only in front of the state media here. The video that was released to state television was mute, there’s no sound on it.”

The memoir isn’t publicly available yet, and there’s no word on what’s inside. But a writer for The Inquisitr says, you can expect it to paint the Communist Party and Castro himself in as flattering a light as possible.

“Leave it to Cuban leader Fidel Castro to spend much of the only public time he’s had recently involved in obvious self promotion.”

Castro handed the presidency off to his brother Raul in 2008, and stepped down as head of the party in 2011.