Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays

by Edward W. Said

"This is surely a major work, among the most provocative and cogent accounts of culture and the humanities that America has produced in recent years."
―Martha C. Nussbaum, The New York Times Book Review

From one of the world's most beloved and respected public intellectuals comes a collection of essays examining culture, the literary canon, and the ever-shifting terrain of history

With their powerful blend of political and aesthetic concerns, Edward W. Said's writings have transformed the field of literary studies. This collection of literary and cultural essays reconfirms what no one can doubt—that Said is the most impressive, consequential, and elegant critic of our time.

Said's topics are many and diverse, from the movie heroics of Tarzan to the machismo of Ernest Hemingway to the shades of difference that divide Alexandria and Cairo.

As in the title essay, the widely admired Reflections on Exile, the fact of his own exile and the fate of the Palestinian people gives both form and the force of intimacy to the questions Said pursues. Taken together, these essays—from the famous to those that will surprise even Said's most assiduous followers—afford rare insight into the formation of a critic.

Invigorating, edifying, acutely attentive to the vying pressures of personal and historical experience, Reflections on Exile is a source of immeasurable intellectual delight.

About the Author

Edward W. Said: Academic, Writer & Literary Critic

Edward W. Said was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, raised in Jerusalem and Cairo, and educated in the United States, where he attended Princeton (B.A. 1957) and Harvard (M.A. 1960; Ph.D. 1964). In 1963, he began teaching at Columbia University, where he was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature.

He died in 2003 in New York City. He is the author of twenty-two books which have been translated into 35 languages, including Orientalism (1978); The Question of Palestine (1979); Covering Islam (1980); The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983); Culture and Imperialism (1993); Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East Peace Process (1996); and Out of Place: A Memoir (1999). Besides his academic work, he wrote a twice-monthly column for Al-Hayat and Al-Ahram; was a regular contributor to newspapers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; and was the music critic for The Nation.