In an episode of Himal’s Southasia Review of Books podcast from December 2024, we speak 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.
The episode is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Youtube.