The Cage · the Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers

"An incisive first account of the formation, history, and bloody dissolution of the rebel Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka."

"Some of the best coverage of Sri Lanka right now is coming from Gordon Weiss." --NICK BRYANT, BBC News Correspondent

"An excellent account . . . scrupulously fair."--"Economist"

"This shattering, heartbreaking tale of savagery and suffering not only lifts the veil that conceals one of the most awful tragedies of the current era, but also helps us understand what should be done, not just in this sad and beautiful land, but long before other such horrors spiral out of control." --NOAM CHOMSKY, Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics, MIT, and author of "Hopes and Prospects"

""The Cage" is a comprehensive and compellingly readable account of one of the very worst atrocity stories this century. Gordon Weiss is scrupulously evenhanded in describing the terrible excesses of the Tamil Tigers as well as the Sri Lankan authorities. His book is a timely prod to the world's collective conscience." --GARETH EVANS, former Foreign Minister of Australia, Co-Chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, and author of "The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All"

In the closing days of the thirty-year Sri Lankan civil war, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, according to UN estimates, as government forces hemmed in the last remaining Tamil Tiger rebels on a tiny sand spit, dubbed "The Cage." Gordon Weiss, a journalist and UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the final years of the war, pulls back the curtain of government misinformation to tell the full story for the first time. Tracing the role of foreign influence as it converged with a history of radical Buddhism and ethnic conflict, The Cage is a harrowing portrait of an island paradise torn apart by war and the root causes and catastrophic consequences of a revolutionary uprising caught in the crossfire of international power jockeying.

Gordon Weiss has lived in New York and worked in numerous conflict and natural disaster zones including Bosnia, Afghanistan, Darfur, and Haiti. Employed by the United Nations for over twelve years, he is now a visiting scholar at Sydney University and a correspondent for Australia's "Global Mail, " where he continues his investigative reporting on Sri Lanka.