Tariq Ali Books In Order

Publication Order of Islam Quintet Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Plays

Publication Order of Writers & Readers Documentary Comic Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali is a writer, political activist, journalist, filmmaker, historian, and public intellectual.

He’s a member of the editorial committee of Sin Permiso and the New Left Review, and contributes to CounterPunch, The Guardian, and the London Review of Books.

Tariq was born October 21, 1943 in Lahore, Punjab, where he grew up. He is the son of Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (an activist) and Mazhar Ali Khan (a journalist).

He first became politically active during his teen years when took part in opposition to the military dictatorship in Pakistan. One of his uncles that worked in Pakistani military intelligence warned his parents that Ali wouldn’t be protected. So his parents shipped him off to England, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford.

His public profile started growing during the Vietnam War, as he engaged in debates against the war with figures like Michael Stewart and Henry Kissinger. He testified at the Russell Tribunal over US involvement in Vietnam. Ali, over time, became more and more critical of Israel and American foreign policies. He was even a vigorous opponent of American relations with Pakistan which tended to back military dictatorships over democracy. He was one of the marchers on the American embassy in London in 1968 in a demonstration opposing the Vietnam War.

“Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree” is the first novel in the “Islam Quintet” series and was released in 1992. The savagery of the Reconquest ripped apart the entire world of the Banu Hudayl family. For the doomed Muslims of the late-fifteenth century Spain, the approaching forces of Christendom don’t bring peace. They bring the sword.

Capturing the brutality of a war both cultural and military, as well as the price the innocent pay, Tariq opens his Islam Quintet with a profound and harrowing piece of historical fiction.

“The Book of Saladin” is the second novel in the “Islam Quintet” series and was released in 1998. This is Saladin’s fictional memoir, who was the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem, as it was dictated to a Jewish scribe, named Ibn Yakub. Saladin grants Ibn permission to talk to his wife and his retainers in order to provide a much fuller portrait of the Sultan’s memoirs. A series of interconnected tales follows, stories that brim over with warmth, passions, and earthly humor in which ideals clash with realities and dreams are confounded by desires.

At the novel’s core is an affecting love affair between Jamila (the Sultan’s favored wife) and Halina (a beautiful later addition to his harem). The novel charts Saladin’s rise as Sultan of Egypt and Syria and it follows him while he prepares, in alliance with his Christian and Jewish subjects, to take Jerusalem back from the Crusaders. It’s a medieval tale, however much of it’ll prove to be uncannily familiar to those that follow events in contemporary Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus. Disillusioned soldiers, betrayed hopes, and unrealistic alliances for this novel’s backdrop.

“The Stone Woman” is the third novel in the “Islam Quintet” series and was released in 2000. Every year, as the weather in Istanbul gets to be unbearable, the family of a retired Ottoman notable (named Iskender Pasha), retires to their summer palace that overlooks the Sea of Marmara. It’s 1899 and the last great Islamic empire is in some serious trouble. One former tutor poses this question that the family’s been refusing to face.

The history of Iskender Pasha’s family mirrors the degenerating of the Empire they’ve served for the past 500 years. This is a passionate tale about servants and masters, painters and school teachers. It’s marked by vendettas and jealousies, and with the Empire’s decay, this new generation that is totally hostile to the myths and half-truths of the “golden days”.

“A Sultan in Palermo” is the fourth novel in the “Islam Quintet” series and was released in 2005. One ailing king tries to unify Muslim and Christian worlds of medieval Sicily.

Amid all the misery and chaos of the Middle Ages, Sicily proved to be an island in more than one way. Even after the Christians had reconquered the island, the citizens retained their Muslim culture. There was one ruler able to be a bridge between both worlds, speaking Arabic fluently, maintaining his harem, and took on the dual titles of King Roger of Sicily and Sultan Rujari of Siqilliya.

Aiding Rujari is the Muslim cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi. While the Sicilian leader descends into his old age and the island gets pulled toward European values, al-Idrisi gets caught between the plots of resistance brewing among his fellow Muslims and his friendship with Rujari.

Pride and friendship collide with lust and greed in this rich novel about medieval Sicily.

This is a mythic novel where greed, pride, and lust intermingle with greatness and resistance. It echoes a past which can still be heard to this very day.

“Night of the Golden Butterfly” is the fifth novel in the “Islam Quintet” series and was released in 2010. This final novel moves between the cities of the 21st century, from Lahore to London, from Beijing to Paris. The narrator gets rung one morning and is reminded about how he owes a debt of honor. The creditor is Mohammed Aflatun (known as Plato) this irascible yet gifted painter that lives in Pakistan.

Plato, who used to specialize in stepping back out of the limelight, now wants his total life story written. While the tale unravels we meet Alice Stepford (Plato’s London friend) who now is a prominent music critic in New York. Mrs. “Naughty” Latiff, the Islamabad housewife whose own fondness for generals leads to her flight to the salons of intellectually fashionable Paris, where she’s hailed as the Diderot of the Islamic world. There’s also Jindie, the Golden Butterfly of the title, the narrator’s first love.

Interwoven with this chronicle of contemporary life is the turbulent history of Jindie’s family. Her great forebear, Du Wenxiu, led this Muslim rebellion in Unnan during the 19th century and ruled the region from his capital of Dali for nearly a decade, as Sultan Suleiman.

This reveals Tariq in full flight, both intelligent and imaginative, as well as stimulating and satirical.