Tariq Ali (born 21 October 1943) is a novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator.
He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and theLondon Review of Books.

He was born and raised in Lahore. He is the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and activist mother Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter ofSir Sikandar Hyat Khanwho led the Unionist Muslim League and was later Prime Minister of the Punjab from 1937–1942).

Ali's parents "both came from a very old, crusty, feudal family". His father had broken with the family's conventions in politics when he was a student, adopting communism and atheism. Ali's mother also belonged to the same family, and became radicalized upon meeting his father.

While studying at the Government College Lahore, he organised demonstrations against Pakistan's military dictatorship. Ali's uncle was chief of Pakistan's Military Intelligence. His parents sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He was elected President of the Oxford Union, in 1965. Ali's tenure at the Union included a meeting withMalcolm X in December 1964 during which Malcolm X expressed deep consternation about his own risk of assassination.

His public profile began to grow during the Vietnam War, when he engaged in debates against the war with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. He testified at the Russell Tribunal over US involvement in Vietnam. As time passed, Ali became increasingly critical of American and Israeli foreign policies.

Drawn into revolutionary socialist politics through his involvement with The Black Dwarf newspaper, he joined a Trotskyist party, theInternational Marxist Group(IMG) in 1968. He was recruited to the leadership of the IMG and became a member of the International Executive Committee of the  Fourth International. He also befriended influential figures such as Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono.

In 1967 Ali was in Camiri, Bolivia, not far from where Che Guevara was captured, to observe the trial of Regis Debray. He was accused of being a Cuban revolutionary by authorities. Ali then said "If you torture me the whole night and I can speak Spanish in the morning I'll be grateful to you for the rest of my life.

During this period he was an IMG candidate in Sheffield Attercliffe at the February 1974 UK general election and was co-author ofTrotsky for Beginners, a cartoon book. In 1981, the IMG dissolved when its members entered the Labour Party: the IMG was promptly proscribed. Ali then abandoned activism in the revolutionary left and supported Tony Benn in his bid to become deputy leader of the Labour Party that year.

In 1990, he published the satire Redemption, on the inability of the Trotskyists to handle the downfall of the Eastern bloc. The book contains parodies of many well-known figures in the Trotskyist movement.

(Source: Wikipedia. For more details, visit Tariq Ali’s website http://tariqali.org/)

Works (partial)

·         Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power (1970)

·         The Coming British Revolution (1971)

·         1968 and After: Inside the Revolution (1978)

·         Chile, Lessons of the Coup: Which Way to Workers Power (1978)

·         Trotsky for Beginners (1980)

·         Can Pakistan Survive?: The Death of a State (1983)

·         Who's Afraid of Margaret Thatcher? In Praise of Socialism (1984)

·         The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on 20th-Century World Politics (1984)

·         An Indian Dynasty: The Story of the Nehru-Gandhi Family (1985)

·         Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (1987)

·         Revolution from Above: Soviet Union Now (1988)

·         Iranian Nights (1989)

·         Moscow Gold (1990)

· Redemption (1990)

·         Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1992; 1st in the 'Islam Quintet')

·         Necklaces (1992)

·         Ugly Rumours (1998)

·         1968: Marching in the Streets (1998)

·        Fear of Mirrors Arcadia Books (4 Aug 1998)

·          The Book of Saladin (1998; 2nd in the 'Islam Quintet')

·         Snogging Ken (2000)

·         The Stone Woman (2000; 3rd in the 'Islam Quintet')

·         Masters of the Universe: NATO's Balkan Crusade (2000)

·         Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002)

·      Bush in Babylon (2003)

·         Street-Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (2005)

·         Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations with Tariq Ali (2005)

·         Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror (2005)

·         Conversations with Edward Said (2005)

·         A Sultan in Palermo (2005; 4th in the 'Islam Quintet')

·         The Leopard and the Fox (2006)

·         Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (2006)

·         A Banker for All Seasons: Bank of Crooks and Cheats Incorporated (2007)

·         The assassination: Who Killed Indira G? (2008)

·         The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008)

·         The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom: and other Essays (2009)

·         The Idea of Communism (Non-fiction) (2009)

·         Night of the Golden Butterfly (2010; 5th in the 'Islam Quintet')

·         The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad (2010)