The publication of Stranger to History is likely to be turned into a fiery political event in Pakistan. The author is the half-Indian son of Salman Taseer, the glamorous and controversial Governor of the Punjab and one of Pakistan’s most important newspaper proprietors.The work is a heartfelt cry for attention from the old mogul, and with its talk of alcohol and of illicit liaisons it provides plenty of fuel for the Governor’s enemies.

But it will be a pity if Aatish’s first book — part family memoir, part an account of his journey through the heart of the radical Islamic world — is exploited by his father’s foes. This is a work that ought to be read by policy-makers in Whitehall and Washington as well as in Islamic countries — for its insights into the thinking of angry young Muslim men. Identity, imagined history, alienation and the idea of Islam as a nationality and a ‘mode of being’ are the recurrent themes of both narratives.

Aatish’s mother is an Indian Sikh and after his parents’ estrangement he grew up in Delhi. As a young adult he became close to his father’s second wife and his other children but struggled to establish the relationship he had wanted with Salman Taseer himself.

In 2005 he wrote for a British magazine about radicalised young Yorkshire Muslims, most of them of Pakistani extraction. He saw that they ‘felt neither British nor Pakistani, that they had rejected the migration of their parents, that as Muslims they felt free of these things’. Although a Muslim himself, Aatish admits that he knew little about his religion at that time and was intrigued by their ‘extra-national identity’.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP