{"id":19555,"date":"2025-08-24T03:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T03:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/19555\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T03:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T03:50:10","slug":"a-sociological-message-delivered-through-truly-propulsive-writing-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/19555\/","title":{"rendered":"A sociological message delivered through truly propulsive writing \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Who Will Remain<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p><strong>Author:<\/strong>  Kasim Ali <\/p>\n<p><strong>ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-0-00-845059-5<\/p>\n<p><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> 4th Estate =<\/p>\n<p><strong>Guideline Price:<\/strong> \u00a316.99<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Who Will Remain, the second novel by author Kasim Ali, is a classic tale of tragic greed, brought into the modern-day, working-class <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/pakistan\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/pakistan\/\">Pakistani<\/a> community of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/uk\/#:~:text=Stay%20informed%20with%20the%20latest%20UK%20news%2C%20breaking,by%20Ireland%27s%20quality%20news%20brand%2C%20The%20Irish%20Times\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/uk\/#:~:text=Stay%20informed%20with%20the%20latest%20UK%20news%2C%20breaking,by%20Ireland%27s%20quality%20news%20brand%2C%20The%20Irish%20Times\">Birmingham<\/a>. Yet, much like the classics, the predictability of the plot in no way diminishes the novel\u2019s effectiveness. As always, the agonising inevitability only lends to the tension. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It opens with Amir, our protagonist, attending the funeral of his cousin, Saqib, who has died after being stabbed in a gangland fight. Amir is suitably horrified by his death, yet his bitterness towards his own ongoing poverty outweighs the horror. This obsession with wealth is Amir\u2019s tragic flaw, and from it the plot ensues.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Certainly, some of Ali\u2019s sentences are clunky, and at times the dialogue can feel a little like unnatural explication. Also, some of the characters, especially Amir\u2019s fellow students, can feel like stereotypes, although I will say that this characterisation doesn\u2019t especially rankle \u2013 so many people are stereotypes, as much as we\u2019d like to think otherwise, especially students. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">And perhaps this is especially forgivable here because of Ali\u2019s moments of stunning incisiveness. Early on, upon entering the flat of his much wealthier friend and feeling as though he shouldn\u2019t be there, Amir \u201c &#8230; glanced behind him as he\u2019d walked through to see whether he\u2019d left a trail of dark behind him, his poor f**king up the carpet\u201d. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Another fascinating aspect of this novel is Ali\u2019s depiction of the rage and stagnation that coerces \u201cgood boys\u201d such as Amir into crime. There\u2019s an eye-opening moment when Adnan, the gang\u2019s leader, describes to Amir the seemingly inescapable bind they\u2019re in:<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cAll the money I have is from white mans, that\u2019s what taking power looks like, not just walking down the path they made for us, hoping that maybe, one day, we might be able to have a job or wear a suit that makes them respect us, nah that\u2019s not the f**king way, this is the f**king way &#8230;\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The rage contained in these characters bristles palpably from the page. It also offers some understanding into the desperate situation of disaffection among young men in Britain and, increasingly, in Ireland. Although it could easily have felt like sermonising, Ali succeeds in conveying a particular sociological message through truly propulsive writing. Here we have a good old Dickensian novel. Lovely stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who Will Remain Author: Kasim Ali ISBN-13: 978-0-00-845059-5 Publisher: 4th Estate = Guideline Price: \u00a316.99 Who Will Remain,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[359,18,117,19,17,2214,393],"class_list":{"0":"post-19555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-pakistan","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}