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 Diderot of the Islamic world; and there's Jindie, the Golden
Butterfly of the title, the narrator's first love. 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.
