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Graphic novelist Taha Siddiqui discusses “Journalism, Dissidence, and Exile”

By John Freeman on June 9, 2025 • ( 0 )

Pakistani investigative journalist Taha Siddiqui, winner of the prestigious journalism award Prix Albert Londres, author of The Dissident Club with French artist Hubert Maury, is in London this week, for an event titled “Journalism, Dissidence, and Exile,” at Institut français du Royaume-Uni.

The Dissident Club by Taha Siddiqui and Hubert Maury, a graphic memoir published by Arsenal Pulp Press last month, recounts Taha’s in Islamabad in 2018, when he was kidnapped at gunpoint and barely escaped 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?

An action-packed graphic memoir about Islamic politics, complex family dynamics, and one man’s dedication to truth and principle, The Dissident Club tells the story of his intriguing life and career. It begins with his childhood in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan under the stern gaze of a fundamentalist Islamic father. Then, Taha 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 the 9/11 atrocity in New York, Taha 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 Taha’s experiences as a young man fighting for truth and justice against the harsh backdrop of Islamic fundamentalism and corruption.

“Journalism, Dissidence, and Exile”

Join award-winning Pakistani investigative journalist Taha Siddiqui, award-winning Syrian journalist and communications consultant Zaina Erhaim, and Fiona O’Brien, journalist and UK Director of Reporters Without Borders, for a panel conversation chaired by Daniel Gorman, Director of English PEN. Together, they will explore approaches to reporting on geopolitics, conflict, and international news in current media contexts in the UK and France.

They will question what it means to travel to a place of unrest to report, what it means to report in exile on your home country, and how place affects one’s freedom to express – and to dissent – in the media. And they will discuss how the context from which one is reporting intersects with ideas of neutrality, balance, and truth.

A selection of books in both English and French will be available for purchase at the event.

Fiona O’Brien has been the UK Director of Reporters Without Borders since 2023. After starting her career on a local paper, she joined Reuters as a correspondent, taking postings in Nairobi, Baghdad and Beirut and covering conflicts including Iraq, Sudan and DRC. She worked for the United Nations in Khartoum, and taught journalism for many years at London’s Kingston University.

Zaina Erhaim is a Syrian journalist and a consultant in media and gender with different organisations across the MENA, who works as a managing editor of Jeem, a feminist Arabic website. She is the founder of Women Journalist Alliance, that works to support and amplify the voices of women in journalism in the region. Before working independently, Zaina was the communications manager for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. She has a master’s degree in international journalism from City, University of London.

Daniel Gorman joined English PEN as Director in August 2019. Prior to English PEN Daniel was Executive Director of Shubbak, Europe’s largest festival of contemporary Arab culture. Daniel is also a co-founder of Highlight Arts, who have organised UK-based international arts festivals and events since 2007 including projects working with writers in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Daniel has written for the Guardian, Irish Times, N+1 and many others, and contributed an essay to the PEN supported volume Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books, 2014). Daniel is a National Arts Strategies ‘CEO Community and Culture’ 2015 fellow and a British Council Cultural Leadership International fellow.

This event is delivered in partnership by English PEN, Institut français, and Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

• Journalism, Dissidence, and Exile 7.00pm Thursday 12th June 2025, Institut français du Royaume-Uni, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT | Book Here

• The Dissident Club is available from all good bookshops | ISBN: 978-1551529530 | AmazonUK Affiliate Link

• Welcome to the Jungle: Survival mode: Taha Siddiqui, a journalist and entrepreneur in exile (Interview)

With thanks to Paul Gravett

About the Author
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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.