The Dissident Club: Chronicle of a Pakistani Journalist in Exile - Paperback

by Taha Siddiqui (Author), Hubert Maury (Author), David Homel (Translator)

The New York Public Library's Best New Comics of 2025 for Adults

An urgent and compelling graphic memoir about a Pakistani investigative journalist at odds with his fundamentalist family and the Pakistani military that attempts to kidnap him

In Islamabad in 2018, Pakistani investigative journalist Taha Siddiqui is kidnapped at gunpoint and barely escapes being killed. He flees the country on the first plane to France with questions left unanswered: What motivated the attack? Was the tyrannical Pakistani military involved?

The Dissident Club is an action-packed graphic memoir about Islamic politics, complex family dynamics, and one man's dedication to truth and principle. With illustrator Hubert Maury, Siddiqui, winner of the prestigious journalism award Prix Albert Londres, tells the story of his intriguing life and career, beginning with his childhood in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan under the stern gaze of a fundamentalist Islamic father. Siddiqui rebels against his religion, but his personal freedom is constrained by strict Islam, especially after his father joins a jihadi mosque.

Following the Gulf War and then the shock caused by 9/11, Siddiqui enters university and begins his personal emancipation. He becomes a journalist, but as he reveals the crimes of the Pakistani military, he learns the hard way that journalists are moving targets. Once in Paris, he opens the Dissident Club, a bar dedicated to helping political dissidents from around the world.

An expansive Pakistani coming-of-age story, The Dissident Club documents Siddiqui's experiences as a young man fighting for truth and justice against the harsh backdrop of Islamic fundamentalism and corruption.

Author Biography

Taha Siddiqui is an award-winning Pakistani journalist living in exile in Paris. In Pakistan, Taha worked for the New York Times, The Guardian, France 24, Arte, the Christian Science Monitor, Al Jazeera, and many other international and local media organizations.

Hubert Maury is an artist and writer of graphic novels. The Dissident Club is his first graphic work to be published in English.

David Homel is a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and translator, and the author of nine novels. He has translated many French-language books into English and is a two-time recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation. He lives in Montreal.