Tariq Ali has been a British national treasure for almost five decades. Revolutionary, writer, broadcaster, filmmaker, polemicist-fighter in the street-and general all-round trouble-maker (in the nicest possible sense), he's been them all, and usually at the same time. Since 1990 Ali has also worked in fiction, firstly with Redemption, and now with a planned quartet of historical novels, of which The Book of Saladin is the second. (The first was the award-winning Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree.) Ali's passion for life, and his humor, are found all over this latest work, which is set in the 12th century-with eerily prescient echoes of modern times. It shows us the conflict between Christian and Islamic civilizations set to a sometimes bawdy, sometimes brutal background where all of life is in flux. As in his previous novel, Ali shows the depth and breadth of his learning and humanity on every page. Like his central character, Saladin, or Salah-al-Din (the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem), he has been a fighter of many causes, a maker of alliances, who has made an impact on the world around him. Unlike his hero, Tariq Ali has never been a Sultan, or a warrior, except a class one, of course. But between them-Ali and his warrior king-readers can discover much of both history and contemporary life in the melting pot of world religion. -Robin Hunt, Amazon.co.uk