A gripping investigation into the extraordinary career of Serbias legendary warlord.
Zeljko Arkan Raznatovic began his life as a petty criminal, a juvenile delinquent adrift in the floundering state of Yugoslavia. He would eventually become famous throughout Western Europe: as the smiling bank robber; as a Houdini-like fugitive from multiple prisons; and even as a state-sponsored assassin. Stories of motorboat robberies and daylight bank heists would follow him from country to country. Yet however impressive his criminal reputation seemed at first, it was only the beginning of his path to infamy.
Following Yugoslavias chaotic descent into madness inthe 1990s, Arkan would become not only a gangster but one of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevics most valued henchmen in the countrys civil war. He rallied Belgrades notoriously violent soccer hooligans, paired them with inmates from Serbias prisons, among other brutal street thugs, and trained them to become his ruthless foot soldiers, known as the Tigers. During the war, the men rampaged through Croatia and Bosnia---killing, raping, burning, and looting. As they earned a reputation as Serbias most feared death squad (accused of genocide by The Hague tribunal), Arkan became one of the regions wealthiest men. A national hero, he married the countrys greatest pop star---the so-called Madonna of the Balkans---in a ceremony that was compared to that of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
His fame and good fortune, however, could not last. In 1999, as NATO bombs fell on Belgrade, The Hagues International War Crimes Tribunal indicted Arkan for crimes against humanity, the United States called for his arrest, the world media chased him, and mobster rivals wanted him dead. His days were numbered, and just after the Serbian New Year, he was shockingly assassinated in the crowded lobby of a high-profile Belgrade hotel.
In Hunting the Tiger, journalist Christopher S. Stewart tells the spectacular, bloody, and often nebulous story of a man who was equal parts James Bond, James Dean,Billy the Kid, and Al Capone. In a region still in the throes of sectarian conflict and wracked by the aftermath of decades of violence, Stewart gives us an engaging first-person look at one man who became a symbol of an intensely combustible and illicit age, andwho played both villain and hero at a profound historical moment.
