You Can't Please All

Ali remains an outlier and intellectual bomb-thrower; an urbane, Oxford-educated polemicist * Observer *Tariq Ali has not lost the passion and vim which made him a symbol of the spirit of ‘68 … has not seen fit to join forces with the terminally cynical, or set up a graven god that can be accused of failing – Christopher HitchensVintage Ali: literate rabble-rousing mixed with entertaining sniping, smart aperçus, and endless provocations. * Kirkus Reviews *Entertaining, politically engaged … a superbly bracing world tour. – Stuart Jeffries * Guardian *Fascinating reading … an autobiography that matters. – Chris Bambery * Counterfire *Ali can be refreshingly funny, gossipy and personable, just the activist you would want to sit down and have a chat with … a great new year read. – Steven Andrew * Morning Star *A great read … [Ali] has always got something insightful and interesting to say. – Dave Kellaway * Anti-Capitalist Resistance *[A] glimpse of the perils and benefits of being one of the world’s best-known left-wing activists and intellectuals – Andy Beckett * London Review of Books *To escape … with your principles mostly intact, your rage undimmed - that too is a kind of virtue, and its own monument. – James Robins * Times Literary Supplement *[Ali’s] range is extraordinary, moving from muck-raking exposures to Marxist theory; from boisterous satire to a sweet and gentle humour on his parents’ romantic elopement … a joy to read. – Sheila Rowbotham * Red Pepper *Tariq Ali is in a league of his own as a public intellectual and Marxist political activist with special expertise in South Asia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He has more than a knack for making his own fascination with a subject contagious… Ali has maintained a kind of immutable persona but a mind that can’t stay still. Autobiography is a topic terrifically suited to his many gifts. – Alan Wald * Against the Current *

Tariq Ali has written more than two-dozen books on world history and politics—the most recent of which are The Extreme Centre, The Dilemmas of Lenin and The Forty-Year War in Afghanistan, Winston Churchill—as well as the novels of his Islam Quintet and scripts for the stage and screen. He is a long-standing member of the Editorial Committee of New Left Review and lives in London.