A Dialogue with History consists of interviews of 39 people in `position of authority` conducted by Zahid Hussain, an award-winning journalist and prolific writer, over the course of his work over t wo decades.

Those interviewed are both Pakistani and foreign and all of the interviews were conducted between 1983 and 2003 and thus some are more than 40 years old. According to Hussain, each of those featured have left `a rich legacy`, and the main objective of the book was to leave `historical records for posterity.

Some personalities, such as former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, have been interviewed many times.

Eight of those interviewed are foreigners, while the rest are Pakistani. Four of them are women politician Hameeda Khuhro, first lady Kulsoom Nawaz Sharif, Dr Nafees Sadik special adviser to the UN Secretary General and executive director of the UN Nations Population Fund and human rights activist Asma Jehangir. The book doesn`t include interviews of Benazir Bhutto because the author has written a separate book on her Face to Face with Benazir.Many of those interviewed were famous without being great such as former Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, whom many would consider a great scoundrel while some were truly heroic, such as Iranian revolutionary Massoud Rajavi.

The chapter on Karzai says a lot about the splendours of his life, and the three security cordons the author had to go through to meet the man whose presidential office was surrounded by American guards, but Karzai`s criminal acts do not get the same attention of the author.

In 2004, Karzai rejected an international proposal to end poppy production in Afghanistan through aerial spraying of chemical herbicides, claiming it would harm the economy. Moreover, Karzai`s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who wasMany of those interviewed were famous without being great such as former Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, whom many would consider a great scoundrel while some were truly heroic, such as Iranian revolutionary Massoud Rajavi.

The chapter on Karzai says a lot about the splendours of his life, and the three security cordons the author had to go through to meet the man whose presidential office was surrounded by American guards, but Karzai`s criminal acts do not get the same attention of the author.

In 2004, Karzai rejected an international proposal to end poppy production in Afghanistan through aerial spraying of chemical herbicides, claiming it would harm the economy. Moreover, Karzai`s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who waslater assassinated in his hometown of Kandahar, was accused of involvement in narcotics deals.

Under President Karzai`s administration, electoral fraud was so apparent that Afghanistan`s status as a democratic state came into question.

Another of his brothers, Mahmoud Karzai, was implicated in the 2010 Kabul Bank crisis. Mahmoud Karzai was the third largest shareholder in the bank, with a seven percent stake. Kabul Bank incurred huge losses on its investments in villas in Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. The real estate investments were registered in the name of Kabul Bank chairman Sherkhan Farnood. Mahmud Karzai bought one such villa from Farnood for seven million dirhams, using money borrowed from Kabul Bank and, in a matter of months, sold it for 10.4 million dirhams.The 39 personalities author Zahid interviewed were men and women who mattered to history.

They range from the `father` of Pakistan`s nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, to dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf; from Pakhtun nationalist politicians such as Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Wali Khan, to an Islamist such as Prof Abdul Ghafoor; from Sindhi nationalists such as Rasul Bux Palijo and G.M. Syed, to veteran political personalities such as Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo and Asghar Khan, and many more.

As for Imran Khan, in the interview included here from 1986, Hussain had no choice but to question him about cricket because that was what he was primarily known for then.

Today, reading his remarks about the quality of Pakistani pitches and his positive response to one-day matches would appear odd from a personality that has undergone a sea change from a sportsman to a philanthropist, politician, parliamentarian, demagogue, prime minister and a convict under appeal.

Nevertheless, the write-up on the cricket legend would interest the reader in spite of the time lag because of the recounting of his clash of personalities, such as with a cricket official who flaunted his military credentials. Lt Col (r) Rafi Naseem, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan (BCCP), insisted that he would walk into the dressing room. Khan, then leading the team, demurred saying: `No one is allowed into the players` dressing room except with the captain`s permission`, because `it is a sanctuary for the players where frustrations come out, where players form strategies among themselves. If you are planning a long innings, for instance, and you are run out, it can be quite painful because the end of an innings is like the end of a small life.

Other responses also still retain interest. Hussain asked Imran Khan who he would nominate as a BCCP member.

Khan responded with the name of Javed Burki, his cousin, who he said was an intelligent man who had seen and played cricket all over the world. Why not the cricketing legend Hanif Mohammad? There was a long pause in reply. Then he replied: `I don`t think... delete this question. . . It will get controversial.

One character the book dwells on is Massoud Rajavi, a courageous man, whom neither the atrocities of the Iranian secret service agency Savak nor a death sentence besides eight years of captivity during the rule of the late Shah of Iran could break.

Rajavi had joined the underground Mujahideen-i-Khalq movement while still a student at Tehran University.After graduating in law, he left for Palestinian camps in Jordan to receive political and military training. Upon his return, he was arrested and given a death sentence, but international pressure saved him. He was only released from prison during the revolution but soon fell out with the revolutionary religious regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini and fled Iran when the first post-revolution president Abolhassan Banisadr`s government was dismissed in 1981. His young wife wasn`t so lucky; she was executed by the regime. Hussain interviewed him in 1983, four years after the end of the monarchy. His prediction that the Khomeini regime too would `soon` collapse turned out to be wrong. The figures given by him about the number of dissidents allegedly eliminated by the regime a fantastic 30,000, with more than 100,000 in prison also need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The author asked him whether the regime could be overthrown by peaceful means. Rajavi replied that since Khomeini himself had given the orders to shoot at a rally in Tehran, it would be a joke to believe in the peaceful overthrow of a regime whose leader says, `I`m the representative of God.` Rajavi`s end is a mystery. He `disappeared` in Iraq at the start of the 2003 US attack on that country.

Among other leaders the author interviewed was Prof Ghafoor Ahmed who, according to the author, was amongst Pakistan`s `most respectable politicians.` Perhaps that `respectability` showed itself in his decision to become a minister in the cabinet of Gen Ziaul Haq, who had violated the 1973 Constitution and ultimately had former premier Z.A.

Bhutto hanged. Presciently, however, in the interview conducted in 1984, Ahmed mocks those who thought the army would hold an election after Bhutto was overthrown and said `once the army comes into power, it never leaves.

The book does a wonderful jobin giving the reader an inkling of the views of some seasoned Pakistani and foreign politicians, including political veterans such as Asif Ali Zardari and the late Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari.

This compilation encapsulates the author`s hard work as a journalist-scholar and is a cornucopia of facts that sometimes fall victim to political legerdemain. The tome is indeed the author`s tour deforce and, as he puts it in the preface, `a dialogue with history.

The reviewer is Dawn`s External Ombudsman and an author