بروتوكولات حكماء سدوم ومقالات أخرى

by Tariq Ali, رندة أبو بكر (Translator )

يضم هذا الكتاب مجموعة مقالات كتبها طارق على خلال العقود الثلاثة الماضية- وفيها يتنوع بأسلوبه على حسب الموضوعات التى يتناولها، ففى الجزء الأول منها- وهو بعنوان "السياسة والأدب"- يستخدم أسلوبا مركبا ولغة تجنح نحو العمق والتحليل، مما يتناسب مع الطبيعة الجدالية لتلك المجموعة من المقالات. أما الجزء الثانى- وهو بعنوان "يوميات"- وفى الجزء الثالث أيضا – وهو بعنوان "فى رثاء الراحلين"- فنجد اللغة والأسلوب يجنحان أكثر نحو التأمل الشخصى والنزعة الغنائية. بصفة عامة تتميز لغة طارق على بالتركيب الاعتماد على التورية وتعدد الإيحاءات، وهى فى هذا لا تخلو من روح المرح والدعابة.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Essays

346 pages, Hardcover

First published July 21, 2009

About the author

Tariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی) is a British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, 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 the London Review of Books.

He is the author of several books, including Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991) , Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007) and the recently published The Duel (2008).

Reviews

[Ramzey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very interesting and many new names for me to remember and learn,
I also learned alot about the partion of India and pakistan and general Zia.
Tariq Ali inspired me to wanting to read even more books. I wanna read Midnights children by Salman Rushdie and Cities of Salt by Abdul Rahman Munif.

I really laughed at this part of the book:

Tariq Ali asked Abdelerman Munif why did you call your book cities of salt?
"It means cities that offer no sustainable existence,. When the waters come in, the first waves will dissolve the salt and reduce the great glass cities to dust. In antiquity, as you know, many cities disappeared. It is possible to foresee the downfall of cities that are inhuman. With no means of livelihood they won't survive. Look at us now, and see how the west see us. The twentieth century is almost over, but when west looks at us, all they see is oil and petrodollars. Saudia Arabia is still without a constitution the people are deprived of elementary rights. Women are treated as third-class citizens. Such a situation produces desperate citizenry, without a sense of dignity or belonging."


Also Interesting history of thatcher in 1980's decided that BBC should stop showing crickets matches and wanted to help Rupert Murdoch build his media empire.

People I learned more about after reading this book:
Anthony Powell, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Goytisolo,
Iqbal, Tagore, Nazrul Islam, Faiz Ahmed faiz, Josh Mahilabadi, Leopold Trepper, Ignace Reiss, Richard Sorge. Abdelerman Munif, Naguib Mahfouz, Pramoedya Ananta toer.

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays on literature and politics. The title essay is one of the weakest in the book, a strange satire on Zionism which begins with a discussion of politics in fiction, turns to a discussion of Proust's novel Sodom and Gommorah, makes some absurd historical claims which I'm not sure were intended seriously and then ends up with a tongue-in-cheek argument which uses the language of the Zionists to argue that just as they claimed that anti-Semitism and ancient Biblical history justified a Jewish state in Palestine, so gays should respond to anti-gay prejudice by establishing a gay state in their ancient homeland of Sodom and Gommorah. I can understand using this as the title for the collection, for shock value, but it is unfortunate in that it suggests a false idea of what the book really is.

The book is divided into three parts; the first part is entitled "Politics and Literature" and contains a very interesting essay on Cervantes (arguing that Don Quixote was a disguised attack on the Catholic Church from the vantage point of the Jewish conversos; an essay on Russian literature, comparing Tolstoy and Vassily Grossman; an essay on Anthony Powell, whom I have never read; an essay on Salman Rushdie, arguing that Shame is his most important novel; an essay on the roots of Indian democracy; interviews with Mario Vargas Llosa (on The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta) and Juan Goytisolo; two "notes" on Kipling and Sartre; a general article on commercialized literature and another article on Zionism and anti-Semitism. All were very interesting and I added a number of new writers to my already too long list of things I need to read (Andrei Platonov, Vassily Grossman and Juan Goytisolo at least).

The second part is called "Diaries" and uses Ali's travels as springboards to discuss the politics of various countries; they were very informative, but some were rather out of date and some assumed more knowledge than I have of the recent history of the different regimes, especially in Pakistan. The third part is made up of elegies of various persons, political figures and friends of Ali who have died in the recent past.

In his discussion of Rushdie, he defends his early novels against the charge that they are "pessimistic", arguing that they are simply realistic and have been borne out by events; Ali himself in these essays is "realistic", but not at all pessimistic, which I found refreshing.

[Caitlin Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic Tariq Ali, some of the essays are great, some are skippable. Altogether a really interesting collection.

[Qusay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disappointing title essay but good sections on Salman Rushdie and Edward Said.