“You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024” Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024, Seagull Books, 2026. Hb. Pp. 824
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.
Twenty-three years ago, Tariq Ali delivered the speech “In War There Is a Need for Translators” that has been published here. It was at the first W. G. Sebald lecture that is given annually on an aspect of literature in translation. It’s named after W.G. Sebald, who in 1989 set up the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT), University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Sebald, also known as “Max,” was a German writer who chose to reside in the UK and continued to write in German. His notable works include The Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz, and On the Natural History of Destruction, which cemented his position as a prominent 20th-century writer. Other writers who have delivered this lecture include Elif Shafak, Alberto Manguel, Lydia Davis, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Bellos, Arundhati Roy, Ali Smith, and Margaret Atwood.
The Seagull Books edition is for sale in the Indian subcontinent only.
Read an extract from the book on Moneycontrol.
Tariq Ali is a writer, filmmaker, and longtime political activist and campaigner. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics, including The Clash of Fundamentalisms (2002), Bush in Babylon (2003), Rough Music (2005), and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Axis of Hope (2006), as well as scripts for both stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review and lives in London.
22 April 2026
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