Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books Podcast from Himal Southasian, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the renowned Pakistani-British activist, writer and public intellectual Tariq Ali about his new memoir, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024 (Verso, November 2024).

Through anecdotes and reflections, Ali offers glimpses of the fascinating company he has kept – Edward Said, Satyajit Ray, Hugo Chávez, Benazir Bhutto – as well as moving accounts of his family and how they lived during the early years of Pakistan.

A sharp-eyed eyewitness to a chaotic and confusing world, Ali understands that its problems don’t ever change, they just take different forms. In this memoir, he recounts a life committed to socialist and anti-imperialist activism, to writing and cultural intervention that ushered in a new era of dissent. 

This episode is now available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Youtube.

Episode notes: 

You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024 by Tariq Ali (Verso, November 2024)

Street-Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties by Tariq Ali (Verso, May 2005)

‘Crooked Cricket’ - Tariq Ali (London Review of Books, May 2014)

‘The Future of Cricket’ - Tariq Ali (March 2009, London Review of Books)

‘Uprising in Palestine’ - Tariq Ali (New Left Review, October 2023)

‘Trouble in Sri Lanka’ - Tariq Ali (London Review of Books, April 2013)

‘Imran Khan’ - Tariq Ali (London Review of Books, November 201)

“Southasia needs a Southasian union” - Tariq Ali in conversation with Subindra Bogati (Himal Southasian, January 2006)