SOURCE: King, Bruce. Review of Fear of Mirrors, by Tariq Ali. World Literature Today 73, no. 1 (winter 1999): 219.

In the following review, King offers a negative assessment of Fear of Mirrors, calling the work confusing, poorly written, and clichéd.

Fear of Mirrors belongs to a literary subgenre that has not been fashionable during recent decades. Like many political novels, it attempts a grand story and has an epic feel resulting from the characters' involvement in major historical events. Tariq Ali tells of the rise and fall of communism as experienced by some Central European Jews who, rebelling against their enclosed society and against violent persecutions, were early communists. The novel moves back and forth between characters and places and times as several generations of family, friends, and lovers devote themselves to the revolution, become disillusioned, are betrayed and exterminated, or want to learn about, explain, or justify the past...