Islam Quintet - Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali's acclaimed series of five novels addressing the long history of the clash of Islam and the West. Together the novels form an epic panorama that begins in fifteenth-century Moorish Spain with Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, and closes in the twenty-first century cities of Lahore, London, Paris and Beijing with Night of the Golden Butterfly.

1. Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1992)
Tariq Ali tells us the story of the aftermath of the fall of Granada by narrating a family sage of those who tried to survive after the collapse of their world. Particularly deft at evoking what life must have been like for those doomed inhabitants, besieged on all sides by intolerant Christendom. "This is a novel that have something to say, and says it well

2. The Book of Saladin (1998)
Tariq Ali's latest novel is a rich and teeming chronicle set in twelfth-century Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem. "The Book of Saladin" is the fictional memoir of Saladin, the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem, as dictated to a Jewish scribe, Ibn Yakub. Saladin grants Ibn Yakub permission to talk to his wife and retainers so that he might present a full portrait in the Sultan's memoirs. A series of interconnected stories follows, tales brimming over with warmth, earthy humor and passions in which ideals clash with realities and dreams are confounded by desires. At the heart of the novel is an affecting love affair between the Sultan's favored wife, Jamila, and the beautiful Halina, a later addition to the harem. The novel charts the rise of Saladin as Sultan of Egypt and Syria and follows him as he prepares, in alliance with his Jewish and Christian subjects, to take Jerusalem back from the Crusaders. This is a medieval story, but much of it will be uncannily familiar to those who follow events in contemporary Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad. Betrayed hopes, disillusioned soldiers and unrealistic alliances form the backdrop to "The Book of Saladin."

3. The Stone Woman (2000)
Each year, when the weather in Istanbul becomes unbearable, the family of Iskender Pasha, a re-tired Ottoman notable, retires to its summer palace overlooking the Sea of Marmara. It is 1899 and the last great Islamic empire is in serious trouble. A former tutor poses a question which the family has been refusing to confront for almost a century: ‘Your Ottoman Empire is like a drunken prostitute, neither knowing nor caring who will take her next. Do I exaggerate, Memed?’ The history of Iskender Pasha’s family mirrors the growing degeneration of the Empire they have served for the last five hundred years. This passionate story of masters and servants, school-teachers and painters, is marked by jealousies, vendettas and, with the decay of the Empire, a new generation which is deeply hostile to the half-truths and myths of the ‘golden days.’

4. A Sultan in Palermo (2005)
The fourth novel in Tariq Ali's Islam Quintet is set in medieval Palermo, a Muslim city rivalling Baghdad and Cordoba in size and splendour. The year is 1153. The Normans are ruling Siqqiliya, but Arab culture and language dominate the island and the court. Sultan Rujari (King Roger) surrounds himself with Muslim intellectuals, several concubines, and an administration presided over by gifted eunuchs. The bishops, expecting to be at the pinnacle of power, are angered by the decadence of the court. In this captivating novel, Tariq Ali charts the life and loves of the medieval cartographer Muhammed al-Idrisi. Torn between his close friendship with the sultan and his friends who are leaving the island or plotting a resistance to Norman rule, Idrisi finds temporary solace in the harem; but, confronted by the common people of Noto and Catania, his conscience is troubled.

5. Night of the Golden Butterfly (2010)
The final volume in Tariq Ali's acclaimed cycle of historical novels. Night of the Golden Butterfly concludes the Islam Quintet - Tariq Ali's much lauded series of historical novels, translated into more than a dozen languages, that has been twenty years in the writing. Completing an epic panorama that began in fifteenth-century Moorish Spain, the latest novel moves between the cities of the twenty-first century, from Lahore to London, from Paris to Beijing. The narrator is rung one morning and reminded that he owes a debt of honour. The creditor is Mohammed Aflatun - known as Plato - an irascible but gifted painter living in a Pakistan where 'human dignity has become a wreckage.' Plato, who once specialized in stepping back from the limelight, now wants his life story written. As the tale unravels we meet Plato's London friend Alice Stepford, now a leading music critic in New York; Mrs. 'Naughty' Latif, the Islamabad housewife whose fondness for generals leads to her flight to the salons of intellectually fashionable Paris, where she is hailed as the . Interwoven with this chronicle of contemporary life is the turbulent history of Jindie's family. Her great forebear, Dù Wénxiù, led a Muslim rebellion in Yunnan in the nineteenth century and ruled the region from his capital Dali for almost a decade, as Sultan Suleiman. Night of the Golden Butterfly reveals Ali in full flight, at once imaginative and intelligent, satirical and stimulating.