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.
