In his book “The Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Carlos, the World’s First Super-Terrorist,” two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and writer, Joby Worick, retraces the bloody path of Ilich Ramírez Sanchez, known as “Carlos the Jackal,” one of the most famous faces of international terrorism in the second half of the twentieth century. The book was published by Scribner's on August 18, 2026, and is the result of a long journalistic investigation based on declassified archives, security services files, and testimonies that were kept secret for years, as well as a rare interview.Worick conducted it with Carlos inside his French prison.
The book begins with the attack that targeted a meeting of OPEC oil ministers in the Austrian capital, Vienna, in 1975, an operation that made Carlos the first “star terrorist” whose news the media competed to follow. Through his biography, Worick paints a picture of a period in which political violence was transformed into a global made-for-television spectacle, through plane hijackings, hostage-taking, airport bombings, and cross-border assassinations. Carlos had started from the positions of the revolutionary leftHe joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but he quickly moved away from ideological commitment in favor of working as a mercenary whose loyalties were determined by whomever paid, from Muammar Gaddafi to Saddam Hussein, while various agencies and countries financed his operations or employed him against their opponents.Worick does not only present Carlos as a man with a cause, but also exposes his contradictions as a narcissist fond of building his own myth, who lived a luxurious life among luxury hotels, women, and elegant fashions, while leaving behind dead, wounded, and operations characterized by cruelty and showmanship. The importance of the book lies in its link between the rise of this “professional terrorist” and the emergence of a new model of violence without borders, which later became a source of inspiration for groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, while highlighting the role that authoritarian regimes played in transforming it intoMobile secret weapon.
The first reviews received the book with wide praise. Kirkus Reviews described it as a true crime saga that reads at the speed of a suspenseful novel, while Publishers Weekly considered it a biography that cannot be put down, combining meticulous research with narrative rhythm. In the end, “The Jackal” succeeds in turning the life of an extremely violent man into a window into understanding the beginnings of globalized terrorism, without allowing the glamor or fame of the personality to obscure its victims or its responsibility for the crimes committed in the name of politics.
