SOURCE: King, Bruce. Review of The Stone Woman, by Tariq Ali. World Literature Today 75, no. 1 (winter 2001): 111.

In the following review, King pans The Stone Woman, contending that Ali is not a “natural novelist” and that he lacks the ability to realistically tell a story.

The Stone Woman is the third installment in Tariq Ali's “Islamic Quartet.” Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1999) concerned the collapse of Muslim Spain with the fall of Granada; The Book of Saladin (1998; see WLT 74:1, p. 245) told of the events leading to the reconquest of Jerusalem from the Crusaders; this new novel is a family saga set at a country home outside Istanbul at the end of the nineteenth century. The family has served the Sultan for centuries but now is critical of the clergy and awaits the end of the Empire and the birth of a new society that can compete with Europe. Some...