Tariq Ali

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THE DUEL by Tariq Ali Publication Date: September 16, 2008 Contact: Katie Monaghan Associate Director Scribner Publicity 212-632-4950 katherine.monaghan@simonandschuster.com

FROM THE AUTHOR OF CAN PAKISTAN SURVIVE?, A PROVOCATIVE NEW LOOK AT PAKISTAN’S TURBULENT PAST AND UNCERTAIN FUTURE

THE DUEL

PAKISTAN ON THE FLIGHT PATH OF AMERICAN POWER

by Tariq Ali

“Pakistan is our partner in the war on terror…It is also a major source of Islamist extremism.”

—Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, addressing the U.S. Senate, January 2007

“Ali carefully examines Pakistan’s long, troubled relationship with America... intense, closely observed commentary on perilous developments in an unstable nation.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A veteran journalist on Pakistan, Ali reviews the country’s six-decade political history critically, indicting the leadership class and its ties to the U.S. Viewing the country as in neocolonial thrall to U.S. strategic interests, Ali comments freely in a narrative that acquaints readers with the country’s main political events…The military being the dominant feature of Pakistani politics, Ali applies his caustic pen to descriptions of its leaders … Ali offers strongly argued opinions on the past, and his preferred future, of Pakistani politics.” –Booklist Pakistan is the world’s sixth most populous country and the only Islamic state with nuclear weapons. It is the likely hideout of Osama bin-Laden and a staging ground for Taliban forces fighting NATO in Afghanistan. Yet the country is also a key ally of the United States in the war on terror and the beneficiary of over ten billion dollars in US aid since September 11. In THE DUEL: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (September 16, 2008, $26.00), Tariq Ali explores the uneasy alliance between the United States and Pakistan and the deepening political crisis inflaming an already unstable region.

Ali draws on extensive first-hand research and personal knowledge of many of the key players involved to assess the causes and consequences of Pakistan’s rapid spiral into political chaos. In the wake of Pervez Musharraf’s resignation, the most likely political alternatives, Benazir’s widower Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif are, Ali, argues, more corrupt than Musharraf himself. The chances of stability in Pakistan look slim – and the consequences of an unstable Pakistan are terrifying for the region and the world. THE DUEL is a timely and provocative must-read.

Praise for Tariq Ali’s The Clash of Fundamentalisms:

“Ali locates the flexible, skeptical, hedonistic traditions within Islamic thinking... whom the fundamentalists wish to silence.”

— Fred Halliday, The Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Urbane, highly intelligent and vividly written. One hopes this fine study will earn no fatwa.”

— Richard Sennett, Times Literary Supplement

“Timely and important...[Ali] is lucid, eloquent, literary, and painfully honest, as he dissects both Islamic and Western fundamentalism.”

— Howard Zinn

About the author:

Writer, journalist and film-maker Tariq Ali was born in Lahore and was educated at Oxford University, where he was president of the Oxford Union (a position subsequently occupied by Benazir Bhutto). He has campaigned against wars from Vietnam to Iraq. Today he writes regularly for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Nation and The London Review of Books and is on the editorial board of New Left Review. He has written more than a dozen books including non-fiction such as Can Pakistan Survive? The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Bush in Babylon and Pirates of the Caribbean, and fiction including Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, The Stone Woman and A Sultan in Palermo, as well scripts for both stage and screen. He lives in London.

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