Tariq Ali, London’s grandfather of agit-prop, is coming to New Zealand, and the Sunday Star Times has an interesting interview with Ali here.

Ali’s book The Clash of Fundamentalisms was recently described as “a sweeping, garrulous epic” by Paul Buchanan in the Listener. Ali is also the author of Bush in Babylon, and the novels Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, The Book of Saladin and The Stone Woman.

He still cuts a controversial figure: the recent release of UK government files from 1973 under the 30-year rule excluded “minutes of a cabinet discussion on Tariq Ali”. And he is supposedly the subject of the Stones’ Street Fighting Man and inspiration for Lennon’s Power To The People.