Make Believe: A True Story - Softcover

Athill, Diana

3.66

74 ratings by Goodreads

9781862077089: Make Believe: A True Story

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1862077088 ISBN 13: 9781862077089

Publisher: Granta UK, 2004

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Hakim Jamal was born in Roxbury, a black district of Boston, in 1933. At 27 he was converted by the teachings of Malcolm X, leader of the Black Muslim movement, Nation of Islam, and his life changed. He became an eloquent spokesman for the black urban underclass in America. Diana Athill met Hakim when she edited his book, and against all odds, they became friends, sometimes lovers. In Make Believe, Diana Athill describes, with her trademark unflinching honesty, her relationship with Hakim and his milieu, the devastation wrought on his personality by his background, his increasingly bizarre behavior, his descent into madness, and his murder in the early 1970s.

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Book Description:

In Make Believe, Diana Athill, acclaimed author of Instead of a Letter and Stet, remembers her turbulent friendship with Hakim Jamal, a young black convert to the teachings of Malcolm X, whom she met in London in the late 1960s.

Despite a desperately troubled youth, he became an eloquent spokesman for the black underclass, was Jean Seberg's lover and published a book about Malcolm X, before descending into a mania that had him believing he was God. A witness to his struggles, Diana Athill writes with her characteristic honesty about her entanglement with Jamal, Jamal's relationship with the daughter of a British MP, Gail Benson, and the couple's eventual murder.

About the Author:

Dlana Athill was born in 1917. She is the author of Instead of a Letter, After A Funeral, Don't Look at Me Like That, Stet and Yesterday Morning, all published by Granta Books. She lives in London.

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