Booklist likes Night of the Golden Butterfly
In a review for Booklist Mark Knoblauch says Night of the Golden Butterfly, which concludes the Islam Quintet, "offers great insight into the history and culture of the Muslim world."
This concluding volume in Tariq Ali's Islam Quintet progresses into the late twentieth century. Narrator Dara's world revolves around the Eastern capitals of Lahore and Beijing as well as modern Paris and London. Dara reconnects with his old flame, a Chinese woman whom he had loved years earlier but who dumped him to marry a succesful Pakistani pysician in London. An old friend resurfaces, a remarkable painter nicknamed Plato, whose paintings should earn him at the very least a fatwa for their graphic satires on the activities of supposedly saintly mullahs. Readers who have followed the first four volumes of this series will find Ali continuing to raise many of the same issues of cultural divergence and the colonial era's enduring poisonous legacy. Ali's graphic dialogue reinforces and reflects contemporary social conflicts and offers great insight into the history and culture of the Muslim world.