SOURCE: Kincaid, Paul. “Iron Curtain Call.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4571 (9 November 1990): 1214.

In the following review, Kincaid derides Ali's prose in Redemption, noting several weaknesses in the plot and stating that the book “is a comedy, but humour is less in evidence than silly portentousness.”

Far from the promised redemption, this crude first novel [Redemption] smacks of revenge. The various factions of Trotskyism, for which Tariq Ali was such a vocal and visible spokesman during the 1960s, are here mercilessly ridiculed as invariably brutish, ignorant and sexually perverse. Most of the factions appear to consist of no more than a handful of louts whose sole purpose in life is to do down rival factions and produce a newspaper detailing the tedious utterances of their leader. Those utterances, furthermore, are couched only in empty jargon; so that a sexual rejection is the cue for “vigorous polemic”, and one character is...