Street-Fighting Years:An Autobiography of the Sixties

The Making of a Young Revolutionary

The 1960s were a time of tumult and radicalism. Street Fighting Years captures the era’s mood and energy, its hope and its passion. In this, the first of his memoirs, Tariq Ali tracks the growing significance of the protest movements of the time alongside his own formation as a leading political activist from Pakistan, where he defied the military regime to lead a demonstration against Patrice Lumumba’s murder.

His political odyssey is unique. Ali witnessed the imperialist brutalities of the Vietnam War—torture, bombing, the killing of children—the aftermath of the revolutionary insurgencies led by Che Guevara in Bolivia, the jubilation of the Prague Spring, and the student protests on the streets of Europe and America. It is a story that takes him from Paris and Prague to Hanoi and La Paz. Along the way, Ali encounters allies and enemies, including Malcolm X, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marlon Brando, Henry Kissinger, John Lennon and Mick Jagger.

This edition includes the famous interview conducted by Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1971.