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Tariq Ali: A Leading Figure of the International Left

Complete your Tariq Ali bookshelf with his memoirs, detailing a life committed to writing and cultural interventions.

12 November 2024

Tariq Ali: A Leading Figure of the International Left

Tariq Ali has been a leading figure of the international left since the 60s. From the student movement in Pakistan to the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, from Trotsky to Malcolm X, from Lenin to Lennon, his works have had a seismic and global influence on leftist thought.

“Ali remains an outlier and intellectual bomb-thrower; an urbane, Oxford-educated polemicist.” — Observer

Memoir

Exploring everything from the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s to the present moment we find ourselves in, Ali's memoirs paint a portrait of life on the Left.

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Theory

Including an insightful portrait of Lenin’s deepest preoccupations, an essential critique of Obamaism, and a discussion of the future of socialist politics in Britain.

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Internationalism

Ali maintains an international perspective in his work, writing on the War on Terror, the unending occupation of Kashmir, and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

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Fiction

These historical novels examine the encounters among Muslims, Christians, and Jews through the ages, from the Crusades to twenty-first-century London.

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Interview

Here Ali discusses some of the key moments in his new memoir, including his time in Palestine, reporting from Vietnam, and his friendship with Hugo Chavez.

 

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  • Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree
    Tariq Ali tells us the story of the aftermath of the fall of Granada by narrating a family sage of those who tried to survive after the collapse of their world. Ali is particularly deft at evoking ...
  • The Book of Saladin
    The Book of Saladin is the fictional memoir of Saladin, the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem, as dictated to a Jewish scribe, Ibn Yakub. Saladin grants Ibn Yakub permission to talk to his wife and re...
  • The Stone Woman
    Istanbul, 1899. The last great Islamic empire is in serious trouble. The family of Iskender Pasha, an Ottoman notable, has retired to its summer palace. Then a former tutor poses a question which t...
  • A Sultan in Palermo
    The fourth novel in Tariq Ali's 'Islam Quintet' charts the life and loves of the medieval cartographer Muhammed al-Idrisi. Torn between his close friendship with the sultan and his friends who are ...
  • Night of the Golden Butterfly
    Night of the Golden Butterfly concludes the Islam Quintet—Tariq Ali’s much lauded series of historical novels, over twenty years in the writing, which has been translated into a dozen languages ...

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