A biographical study of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the man who led the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for the whole of the movement's existence, written by the Indian journalist M.R. Narayan Swamy, who also wrote Tigers of Lanka.
The book follows Prabhakaran rather than the war as a whole: how he came to found the LTTE, how the organisation took shape around him, and how it developed the tactics — including its suicide units — that made it one of the subjects of study for anyone writing about armed movements in South Asia. Swamy covered the conflict as a wire-service reporter from India over many years, and the account draws on that long reporting.
Written in English. It will suit readers coming to the Sri Lankan conflict from outside it — students of South Asian politics and insurgency, journalists, and visitors who want background on the war beyond a guidebook paragraph. Readers already familiar with Swamy's earlier work on the LTTE will find this a closer portrait of a single figure, one who gave almost no interviews and left little personal record.
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