Reflections on Exile

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

“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

Edward W. Said’s writings have transformed the field of literary studies. In this bracing collection of essays, one of the most beloved and respected public intellectuals of our time examines culture, the literary canon, and the ever-shifting terrain of history.

Said’s topics are many and diverse, from the Hollywood heroics of Tarzan to the machismo of Ernest Hemingway to the shades of difference that divide Alexandria and Cairo. In the title essay, the widely admired “Reflections on Exile,” he weighs his own estrangement from his home country and the fate of the Palestinian people against the literary canon’s most romanticized fugitives. “What could be more intransigent than the conflict between Zionist Jews and Arab Palestinians?” Said asks. “Palestinians feel that they have been turned into exiles by the proverbial people of exile.”

The culmination of thirty-five years of scholarship, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays is an invigorating and life-affirming achievement, a work of intellectual, emotional, and moral rigor.