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You Can't Please All

Memoirs 1980-2024

Author Tariq Ali
Ebook (EPUB)
Verso Books | Verso
On sale Nov 05, 2024 | 752 Pages | 9781804290927
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A new memoir from renowned political activist and author of Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties

The revolutionary upsurge of 1968–1975 jump-hopped continents with ease but finally petered out. What happened after is the subject of You Can’t Please All. Tariq Ali recounts a life committed to writing and cultural interventions. An eyewitness in Moscow to the fall of the Soviet Union, he was caught up in the intellectual excitement that had gripped the country. In Porto Alegre, Hugo Chávez invited him to visit Caracas, and the two men developed a striking friendship.

Post-2001, as a founding member of the Stop the War Coalition, he became a fierce critic of the War on Terror, visiting many US cities with surprising regularity to engage in debate and discussion, inaugurating a new phase of political activism. Evident in his work is the integral part politics plays in his life. He is one of the most sought-after socialist and anti-imperialist public intellectuals on most continents.

Underlying the narrative is a chain of anecdotes, reflections, jottings and storytelling. The book explores his work for the theatre and film, as well as his fiction, including the acclaimed Islam Quintet. There are pen portraits of friends and comrades such as Edward Said, Derek Jarman, Richard Ingrams, Benazir Bhutto, Mary-Kay Wilmers, and the intellectuals who founded and relaunched New Left Review: E. P. Thompson, Perry Anderson and Robin Blackburn.

The book also contains a moving family portrait, describing how his parents met and lived during the early years of Pakistan.
"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 Hitchens

"Vintage 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.
Tariq Ali View titles by Tariq Ali
Preface: Being in the World
Chronology

Introduction: Spy Cops – On Being Spied On for Fifty Years

BOOK I: THE END OF THE CENTURY
Part 1: Before the Fall
1. Southall 1979
2. The Thatcher Consensus
3. Farewell to the Fourth
4. Off to India
5. CLR
6. ‘We Have an Editor!’
7. Bandung File
8. Private Eye
9. Russia
10. Moscow Gold
11. Disrupting Heavenly Peace

Part 2: Friends and Comrades
12. Jarman
13. Ho Chi Minh
14. At M-K’s
15. Gott and the Guardian
16. Ernest Mandel
17. Saving the Review
18. Collateral Damage
19. Art of Spying
20. Renewals

BOOK II: A FAMILY INTERLUDE
The ‘Noble and Warlike’ Khattars of Wah
Family Origins
Family Life
A Family in Jeopardy
My Father
Aftermath

BOOK III: THE PROLONGED TWENTIETH CENTURY
Part 1
A New Millennium
Iraq at the Centre of the World
So Was It Worth It?
Mojitos in Pyongyang
The Boulder Interview: Palestine and Israel (2004)
Remembering Edward Said
Was Hugo Chávez Murdered?
Havana Diary (2005)
Al Jazeera, Al Bolivar, Telesur
Fellow Traveller: Oliver Stone
In War There Is a Need for Translators


Part 2
The Case against Tony Blair
The Family Miliband
The New Left Review at Fifty
The Charlie Hebdo Massacre
With Satyajit Ray
The Bhuttos of Larkana
A Painter of His Time
Casteism
Come Dancing
The New Adventures of Don Quixote
English Questions
The End of Cricket?
Kings and Queens

BOOK IV: JOTTINGS
Introduction: A Homage to Lu Xun
Parchment Does Burn (1989)
My Dinner with Mambety (1995)
Better Red than Wed (1996)
A Man without Instincts (1997)
Marx on Suicide (2001)
Al Jazeera (2002)
In Tripoli (2006)
Diyarbakir (2006)
Return to Cochabamba (2007)
Murder in the Family (2008)
The Nobel War Prize (2010)
Against the Extreme Centre (2011)
Blitz Spirit: Alex Cockburn (2011)
Pissing on Insurgents (2012)
Lincoln in His Lover’s Nightgown (2012)
‘Indian Army Rape Us’ (2013)
Ships in the Night (2013)
A Tear Gas Canister, Made in Brazil, Used in Turkey (2013)
Gaza: A Disgrace to the World (2014)
Benedict Anderson: An Irishman Abroad (2015)
The Quintet (1992–2016)
Mr Ford’s Hacienda (2018)
‘I’m Glad Edward Said Is Dead’ (2022)
Adieu Boris, Adieu (2022)
Worstward Ho (2022)
Celebrations (2023)
A Missed Churchill Footnote (2023)
Postscript: The Dying Palestinian

Epilogue: The Ashes of Gaza

Acknowledgements
Index

About

A new memoir from renowned political activist and author of Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties

The revolutionary upsurge of 1968–1975 jump-hopped continents with ease but finally petered out. What happened after is the subject of You Can’t Please All. Tariq Ali recounts a life committed to writing and cultural interventions. An eyewitness in Moscow to the fall of the Soviet Union, he was caught up in the intellectual excitement that had gripped the country. In Porto Alegre, Hugo Chávez invited him to visit Caracas, and the two men developed a striking friendship.

Post-2001, as a founding member of the Stop the War Coalition, he became a fierce critic of the War on Terror, visiting many US cities with surprising regularity to engage in debate and discussion, inaugurating a new phase of political activism. Evident in his work is the integral part politics plays in his life. He is one of the most sought-after socialist and anti-imperialist public intellectuals on most continents.

Underlying the narrative is a chain of anecdotes, reflections, jottings and storytelling. The book explores his work for the theatre and film, as well as his fiction, including the acclaimed Islam Quintet. There are pen portraits of friends and comrades such as Edward Said, Derek Jarman, Richard Ingrams, Benazir Bhutto, Mary-Kay Wilmers, and the intellectuals who founded and relaunched New Left Review: E. P. Thompson, Perry Anderson and Robin Blackburn.

The book also contains a moving family portrait, describing how his parents met and lived during the early years of Pakistan.

Reviews

"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 Hitchens

"Vintage 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

Author

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.
Tariq Ali View titles by Tariq Ali

Table of Contents

Preface: Being in the World
Chronology

Introduction: Spy Cops – On Being Spied On for Fifty Years

BOOK I: THE END OF THE CENTURY
Part 1: Before the Fall
1. Southall 1979
2. The Thatcher Consensus
3. Farewell to the Fourth
4. Off to India
5. CLR
6. ‘We Have an Editor!’
7. Bandung File
8. Private Eye
9. Russia
10. Moscow Gold
11. Disrupting Heavenly Peace

Part 2: Friends and Comrades
12. Jarman
13. Ho Chi Minh
14. At M-K’s
15. Gott and the Guardian
16. Ernest Mandel
17. Saving the Review
18. Collateral Damage
19. Art of Spying
20. Renewals

BOOK II: A FAMILY INTERLUDE
The ‘Noble and Warlike’ Khattars of Wah
Family Origins
Family Life
A Family in Jeopardy
My Father
Aftermath

BOOK III: THE PROLONGED TWENTIETH CENTURY
Part 1
A New Millennium
Iraq at the Centre of the World
So Was It Worth It?
Mojitos in Pyongyang
The Boulder Interview: Palestine and Israel (2004)
Remembering Edward Said
Was Hugo Chávez Murdered?
Havana Diary (2005)
Al Jazeera, Al Bolivar, Telesur
Fellow Traveller: Oliver Stone
In War There Is a Need for Translators


Part 2
The Case against Tony Blair
The Family Miliband
The New Left Review at Fifty
The Charlie Hebdo Massacre
With Satyajit Ray
The Bhuttos of Larkana
A Painter of His Time
Casteism
Come Dancing
The New Adventures of Don Quixote
English Questions
The End of Cricket?
Kings and Queens

BOOK IV: JOTTINGS
Introduction: A Homage to Lu Xun
Parchment Does Burn (1989)
My Dinner with Mambety (1995)
Better Red than Wed (1996)
A Man without Instincts (1997)
Marx on Suicide (2001)
Al Jazeera (2002)
In Tripoli (2006)
Diyarbakir (2006)
Return to Cochabamba (2007)
Murder in the Family (2008)
The Nobel War Prize (2010)
Against the Extreme Centre (2011)
Blitz Spirit: Alex Cockburn (2011)
Pissing on Insurgents (2012)
Lincoln in His Lover’s Nightgown (2012)
‘Indian Army Rape Us’ (2013)
Ships in the Night (2013)
A Tear Gas Canister, Made in Brazil, Used in Turkey (2013)
Gaza: A Disgrace to the World (2014)
Benedict Anderson: An Irishman Abroad (2015)
The Quintet (1992–2016)
Mr Ford’s Hacienda (2018)
‘I’m Glad Edward Said Is Dead’ (2022)
Adieu Boris, Adieu (2022)
Worstward Ho (2022)
Celebrations (2023)
A Missed Churchill Footnote (2023)
Postscript: The Dying Palestinian

Epilogue: The Ashes of Gaza

Acknowledgements
Index

Additional formats

Other Books by this Author

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