Tamil Tigress is a book by Niromi de Soyza (a pen name based on that of Richard de Zoysa), which tells the autobiographical story of a former child soldier of the Sri Lankan guerrilla army Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and one of its first female fighters. This is the first narration of a Sri Lankan female guerrilla soldier to be published as a memoir in English. It was initially written as a diary while at boarding school after the author fled Sri Lanka. The author was inspired to rewrite the book for publication after seeing the negative reaction to those fleeing from the civil war in Sri Lanka. The book was first published by Allen & Unwin in May 2011. It is included in the 50 Books You Can't Put Down' list as part of the Get Reading programme sponsored by the Australian Ministry for the Arts and the Australia Council. It was subsequently published in the United States and India in May 2012, and in the UK in August 2012. Pen name The name Niromi de Soyza is based on that of Richard de Zoysa, a well-known Sri Lankan journalist and human rights activist who was abducted and murdered in 1990, by suspected government agents. Author At the time of publishing the work in 2011, the author of the book is the mother of two children, and living in Sydney, Australia. She was raised in Sri Lanka by a middle-class Tamil Christian family, and at the age of 17 ran away from her convent school to join the Tigers. After leaving the Tigers she was sent by her family to a boarding school in India, and then gained political asylum in Australia at a time when the Tigers were not regarded as a terrorist organisation by the Australian government. Responses Australian Media response The book received wide publicity in Australia, drawing in general sympathetic comment from Australian media personnel. Gordon Weiss, the Australian-born former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka and author of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, responded warmly to the book, saying I found it incredibly moving, you get the perspective of a young person, coming of age and experiencing oppression in extraordinary circumstances, who then joins in great innocence this organisation which seems to offer so much hope. She ultimately sees (the LTTE) as no