About the Author

Writer, journalist and film-maker Tariq Ali was born in Lahore and was educated at Oxford University.Today he writes regularly for a range of publications including The Guardian and The London Review of Books. He has written more than a dozen books including non-fiction as well as scripts for both stage and screen. He lives in London.

Reviews

In his latest examination of Pakistan, Ali (Conversations with Edward Said) takes on the role of political storyteller. The turbulent Pakistani political landscape is both the setting and the protagonist in this study of a country in crisis. Spanning the rule of Pakistan's founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to the Bhutto dynasty and Pervez Musharraf's military control, this work is less an analysis of Pakistan-U.S. relations than a tale of the Pakistani people's struggle for political autonomy and representation. Much like an embedded reporter who becomes a part of his story, Ali is not simply a recorder of events. As an active participant in many of Pakistan's internal political struggles, he cannot separate himself from the living history of his home country. His incisive scholarship on Pakistan's inception and subsequent leadership is peppered with personal anecdotes, biting commentary, and forcefully opinionated prose, effectively demonstrating that objectivity is not a necessary precursor to insightful analysis. Although the storytelling sometimes suffers from chronological breaks and the occasional tangent, Ali's passion for Pakistan and its political future ultimately makes his book an engaging (and often enraging) political story. Recommended for academic libraries.--Veronica Arellano, Univ. of Houston Libs. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.