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A profoundly moving and candid memoir about being a Palestinian in exile, from one of the most important writers and thinkers of the twentieth century.

About the Author

Edward W. Said was one of the world's most influential intellectuals and the most eloquent spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the West. Granta Books also published his collection of essays The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After as well as his other works, including Beginnings and Reflections on Exile. He lived in New York and died in September 2003.

Reviews

Edward Said is among the truly important intellectuals of our century. His examined life, from the tragic and triumphant perspective of a mortal illness, is superbly worth living. I know I shall not read an autobiography to match this one for many years
*Nadine Gordimer*

Said is capable of writing like a gifted novelist, like a Palestinian Proust
*Independent on Sunday*

Out of Place recreates the sights and sounds, the smells and shouts, of a lost world, as Gunter Grass did for Danzig or Joyce for turn-of-the-century Dublin ... One of the greatest cities of our age has produced a work of art, one of the noblest autobiographies of our time
*Irish Times*

A fine elegy and a scrupulous reckoning with the past
*Daily Telegraph*

This delicate and candid memoir by a very private man moved me enormously. Written in "counterpoint" to his illness (leukaemia) at times when he was recovering from chemotherapy, its importance may be measured by the ferocity of the public attempt which preceded and accompanied publication to discredit him as an authentic Palestinian voice
*Ahdaf Soueif*

Out of Place is an intensely moving act of reclamation and understanding, a portrait of a transcultural and often painful upbringing written with wonderful vividness and unsparing honesty. To read it is to come to know [Said's] family and his younger self as closely as we know characters in literature, to be shown, intimately and unforgettably, what it has meant in the last half-century to be a Palestinian
*Salman Rushdie*

An influential literary critic (Culture and Imperialism, etc.), writes movingly and honestly about his life of dislocation and exile. Prompted by a diagnosis of leukemia in 1991, Said's new book is infused with a desire to document not only a life, but a time and placeÄPalestine in the 1930s and '40sÄthat has since vanished. Born in 1935 to a Lebanese mother and Palestinian father who had American citizenship, and raised in Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon, Said has always lived with a divided identity. Even as a child he realized that his first name was British, his last name was Arabic and his nationality was American. In a straightforward, often poetic style, Said charts his family history, his education in British and American schools and his move to the U.S. in 1951 to attend Princeton and begin what was to become a distinguished career as an academic and intellectual. The memoir's most engaging elements are the little personal details that help us understand his later work: the young Said's love of such Hollywood films as Arabian Nights, with Maria Montez, or the novels of Twain and Cooper, offer fresh insights into his later writings about orientalism. Said can be frank about his personal lifeÄwhether it's learning about masturbation or his intense relationship with his mother, whom he identifies as Gertrude to his HamletÄwhich gives the book moments of deep, intimate openness. In the end, this memoir is less a tidy summing-up than an acceptance and exploration of what has been. As Said says, he has "learned actually to prefer being not quite right and out of place." Agent, Andrew Wylie. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.