Suspicious

Tariq Ali: Richard Sorge’s Fate, 21 November 2019

An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent 
by Owen Matthews.
Bloomsbury, 448 pp., £25, March 2019, 978 1 4088 5778 6Show More
Show More
“... The​ skills of the three top Soviet spies of the 20th century – Richard Sorge, Leopold Trepper and Ignace Poretsky/Reiss (better known as Ludwik) – remain unmatched. Sorge has always attracted particular attention. Ian Fleming called him the ‘most formidable spy in history’; other admirers included John le Carré, Tom Clancy and General MacArthur ...”

Enemies of Hindutva

Tariq Ali: The BJP defeat, 8 July 2004

Nehru: A Political Life 
by Judith Brown.
Yale, 407 pp., £25, September 2003, 0 300 09279 2Show More
Nehru 
by Benjamin Zachariah.
Routledge, 336 pp., £10.99, April 2004, 9780415250177Show More
Show More
“... The pundits say that the Indian electorate does not cast votes, but votes castes. This is generally true but at key moments in its postcolonial history, the citizens of the world’s largest democracy – India’s population is just over a billion – have acted to punish the ruling elites. It is the subaltern’s revenge, unpredictable and unpredicted ...”

Daughter of the West

Tariq Ali: The Bhuttos, 13 December 2007

“... slowly in the Bhuttomobile from Karachi airport to the tomb of the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, where she would make a speech. It was not to be. As darkness fell, the bombers struck. Who they were and who sent them remains a mystery. She was unhurt, but 130 people died, including some of the policemen guarding her. The wedding reception had led ...”

Mullahs and Heretics

Tariq Ali: A Secular History of Islam, 7 February 2002

“... The Fatimid caliphs belonged to the Shia tradition, which claimed descent from the fourth Caliph, Ali, and his wife Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet. The Fatimid caliphs had ruled parts of North Africa and lived in Tunisia till a Fatimid expeditionary force under the command of the legendary Slav General Jawhar captured Egypt, and Jahwar established a ...”

That was the year that was

Tariq Ali, 24 May 2018

“... land they owned but it was a hell of a lot since its sale kept them going for a long time. Tariq Ali at the protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, London, 1968. Initially both my grandfathers belonged to the faction that supported the British. The big divide in the family began during the Sikh wars, with one side supporting the ...”

Bitter Chill of Winter

Tariq Ali: Kashmir, 19 April 2001

“... Kashmiris are simply vulgar.’The confessional movement was gaining strength, however. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, had left the Congress in the 1930s partly because he was uneasy about Gandhi’s use of Hindu religious imagery. He had then joined the Muslim League in a partially successful attempt to wrest it from the ...”

On ‘Charlie Hebdo’

“... Slavoj Žižek: In the Grey Zone Tariq Ali: The Muslim Response Jeremy Harding in Paris Adam Shatz: Moral Clarity Tariq Ali: Short Cuts Uri Avnery: Netanyahu at the March Glen Newey: The Right to Joke ...”

On the Coalition

LRB Contributors, 10 June 2010

“... would have been in power for another 13 years. Me: They were. Just called themselves New Labour. Tariq Ali Within a year or two we will remember the engagement interviews featuring Messrs Cameron and Clegg with the same fond disbelief that we now remember the wedding interviews with Charles and Diana. Or so my husband predicts. The real difference ...”

When students ruled the earth

D.A.N. Jones, 17 March 1988

1968: A Student Generation in Revolt 
by Ronald Fraser.
Chatto, 370 pp., £14.95, January 1988, 0 7011 2913 1Show More
Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties 
by Tariq Ali.
Collins, 280 pp., £12.95, November 1987, 9780002177795Show More
Sixty-Eight: The Year of the Barricades 
by David Caute.
Hamish Hamilton, 464 pp., £14.95, January 1988, 0 241 12174 4Show More
Nineteen Sixty-Eight: A Personal Report 
by Hans Koning.
Unwin Hyman, 196 pp., £10.95, April 1988, 9780044401858Show More
Show More
“... in revolt’ of Ronald Fraser’s title – and I was made to surrender my editorship to Tariq Ali. Before my dismissal, I appeared on television to defend the paper against A.J. Ayer, John Gross and Colin Welch – with a chairman who accused me of being a disciple of Sorel, a writer of whom I had barely heard. (David Caute sardonically notes ...”

Short Cuts

Thomas Jones: Bad Manners, 6 July 2000

“... Jenny Diski’s piece on page 9 of this issue) is to be reviewed in the Financial Times by Tariq Ali. It has been noticed at the LRB that in her lengthy acknowledgments, Tariq Ali is singled out for thanks twice. Rowbotham also thanks Robin Blackburn, who, we understand, is to review Richard Gott’s new ...”

Bad Times

Andy Beckett: Travels with Tariq Ali, 20 February 2025

You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024 
by Tariq Ali.
Verso, 799 pp., £35, November 2024, 978 1 80429 090 3Show More
Show More
“... On​ 30 September 2001, Tariq Ali was arrested at Munich airport. His hand luggage contained two objects which were regarded as suspicious: a book by Karl Marx and a copy of the Times Literary Supplement, which included a review, annotated by Ali, of a volume about Algeria ...”

I prefer to be an Ottoman

Justin Huggler: Tariq Ali, 30 November 2000

The Stone Woman 
by Tariq Ali.
Verso, 274 pp., £15, July 2000, 1 85984 764 1Show More
Show More
“... the West as eagerly as Turkey has, which makes it an intriguing setting for the third novel in Tariq Ali’s Islamic Quartet: a series of snapshots of the great historic collisions between the two cultures, taken from the Eastern point of view. The Stone Woman is set as the 19th century draws to a close. With the Ottoman Empire in terminal ...”

Thousands of Cans and Cartons

Christopher Hitchens, 24 May 1990

Against the Grain: An Autobiography 
by Boris Yeltsin, translated by Michael Glenny.
Cape, 215 pp., £12.95, March 1990, 0 224 02749 2Show More
Show More
“... Several years ago, Tariq Ali published an exquisite interview with a disillusioned veteran of the Indian Communist Party. This old comrade had been invited to Moscow by Khrushchev, and wanted a chance to express his misgivings about the treatment of Boris Pasternak. During a Bolshoi performance in which Khrushchev was showing no interest, he seized his moment ...”

After the Referendum

LRB Contributors, 9 October 2014

“... a grand remonstrance from below. Here the Scottish campaign for independence offers a good model. Tariq Ali After​ the 1979 referendum, which mustered too few ‘Yes’ votes to win a Scottish Assembly, there was a lot of heartbreak. Many people, contemplating self-government, had begun to think that Scotland could be a place worth staying in, or ...”

Baseball’s Loss

Geoffrey Hawthorn: The Unstoppable Hugo Chávez, 1 November 2007

Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope 
by Tariq Ali.
Verso, 244 pp., £14.99, November 2006, 9781844671021Show More
Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today 
by D.L. Raby.
Pluto, 280 pp., £18.99, July 2006, 0 7453 2436 3Show More
Venezuela: Hugo Chavez’s Revolution, Latin America Report No. 19 
by International Crisis Group.
Show More
Show More
“... Venezuela and the possibility that Bolivia will actually fall apart. Enthusiastic radicals, like Tariq Ali and Diana Raby, suggest that a truly popular socialism has been reborn in these places. And rebirth, Ali thinks, is half the battle. Raby, convinced that the battle can be won, and whose hopes for it extend even ...”
Show more articles