Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays
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.
1100752720
Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays
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.
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Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays

Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays

by Edward W. Said
Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays

Reflections on Exile: And Other Essays

by Edward W. Said

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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780593687918
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 09/30/2025
Pages: 624
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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 is the author of twenty-two books which have been translated into thirty-five 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). He died in 2003 in New York City.

Table of Contents

Introductionxi
1.Labyrinth of Incarnations: The Essays of Maurice Merleau-Ponty1
2.Sense and Sensibility15
3.Amateur of the Insoluble24
4.A Standing Civil War31
5.Arabic Prose and Prose Fiction After 194841
6.Between Chance and Determinism: Lukacs's Aesthetik61
7.Conrad and Nietzsche70
8.Vico on the Discipline of Bodies and Texts83
9.Tourism among the Dogs93
10.Bitter Dispatches from the Third World98
11.Grey Eminence105
12.Among the Believers113
13.Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community118
14.Bursts of Meaning148
15.Egyptian Rites153
16.The Future of Criticism165
17.Reflections on Exile173
18.Michel Foucault, 1927-1984187
19.Orientalism Reconsidered198
20.Remembrances of Things Played: Presence and Memory in the Pianist's Art216
21.How Not to Get Gored230
22.Foucault and the Imagination of Power239
23.The Horizon of R. P. Blackmur246
24.Cairo Recalled: Growing Up in the Cultural Crosscurrents of 1940s Egypt268
25.Through Gringo Eyes: With Conrad in Latin America276
26.The Quest for Gillo Pontecorvo282
27.Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors293
28.After Mahfouz317
29.Jungle Calling327
30.Cairo and Alexandria337
31.Homage to a Belly-Dancer346
32.Introduction to Moby-Dick356
33.The Politics of Knowledge372
34.Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the Traveler386
35.The Anglo-Arab Encounter405
36.Nationalism, Human Rights, and Interpretation411
37.Traveling Theory Reconsidered436
38.History, Literature, and Geography453
39.Contra Mundum474
40.Bach's Genius, Schumann's Eccentricity, Chopin's Ruthlessness, Rosen's Gift484
41.Fantasy's Role in the Making of Nations493
42.On Defiance and Taking Positions500
43.From Silence to Sound and Back Again: Music, Literature, and History507
44.On Lost Causes527
45.Between Worlds554
46.The Clash of Definitions569
Notes593
Credits605
Index609
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