Ikbal and Idries are tricky subjects for biography ... Green makes impressive use of the government archives, but we never gain an intimate sense of either man’s thoughts or family life. We also get little sense of them as writers. Green quotes sparingly, maybe because both of his subjects were pedestrian stylists at best ... Green also struggles to decide what larger story is illuminated by father and son’s serial self-inventions.
Historian Green concludes his remarkable father-and-son biography by observing that recent history, including the rise of ISIS and the resurgence of the Taliban, shows that the illusions Ikbal and Idries perpetuated led to misunderstandings with disastrous consequences.
Captivating ... Green’s finely wrought narrative presents father and son as, in some ways, boxed into their grift by the strictures of Britain’s racist society and its Orientalist expectations; at the same time, the duo’s genuine love of poetry and spiritualism is palpable. This nuanced and erudite account dives headfirst into the messy contradictions of life under British imperialism for colonial subjects.
