Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist

Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist

In Pursuit of the Jackal, 1975-2011

Summary

This is the latest edition of Colin Smith's best selling - it was translated into Spanish, French, German and Finnish -1976 biography of the Venezuelan born terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. Carlos - Portrait of a Terrorist is the result of painstaking research. Here is the full story of his transformation from spoilt playboy to 'The Jackal', once the favorite assassin of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Previously updated in 1995, after Carlos was sedated and sacked then handed over to French commandos in Khartoum, it has been revised following his latest 2011 conviction by a Paris court for a brutal series of terrorist bombings committed in 1982 and 1983. Smith's account blends perceptive eyewitness reportage of Carlos in action with the memories of friends, acquaintances and at least one lover.

Reviews

  • All the ingredients of a fictional espionage novel are here - sharply drawn characters, a fast-paced plot, violence, terror, intrigue and even the obligatory sex...A highly readable portrait of a committed revolutionary and compulsive bully
    The New York Times

About the author

Colin Smith

Colin Smith is a historian, novelist and former war correspondent. In 1972, at the age of twenty-three, he became the Observer's chief roving reporter and spent the next thirty years covering the world's trouble spots for the Observer and the Sunday Times - from Phnom Penh to the Golan Heights, from Saigon to Sarajevo, from Nikosia to Port-au-Prince. He was named International Reporter of the Year in the 1974 and 1984 British Press Awards.

Today he is best known for his military histories of Britain's campaigns against the Vichy French, the 1942 surrender of Singapore and The Battle of Alamein, which was recently reissued in condensed form as part of Penguin's e-Book Shorts series.

Smith lives in Nicosia with his wife Sylvia and several cats. Readers wishing to contact him or find out more about his work should visit www.colin-smith.info
Learn More

More from this Author

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more