Out of Place: A Memoir

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Granta Books, 1999 - Biography & Autobiography - 295 pages
Experiencing both British and American imperialism as the old Arab order crumbled in the late forties and early fifties, this memoir of Edward Said's early life reveals the influences that have informed his groundbreaking books, Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. ..Edward Said was born in Jerusalem, brought up in Cairo, spending every summer for over forty years in the Lebanese mountain village of Dhour el Shweir, until he was 'banished' to America in 1951. Not Quite Right is a powerful act of emotional archaeology and memory, exploring an essentially irrecoverable past. As ill health sets him thinking about endings, Edward Said returns to his beginnings in this intensely personal memoir of his ferociously demanding 'Victorian' father, and his adored, inspiring, yet ambivalent mother. Quotes; '[A] powerful introspective memoir.' Financial Times ..'I know I shall not read a work to match this one this year, or for many years.' Nadine Gordimer ..'A fascinating book written by a gifted, brave man,' Sunday Telegraph ..'Fine and beautifully written.Said is capable of writing like a gifted novelist.' Independent on Sunday

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About the author (1999)

Born in Jerusalem and educated at Victoria College in Cairo and at Princeton and Harvard universities, Edward Said has taught at Columbia University since 1963 and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University. He has had an unusual dual career as a professor of comparative literature, a recognized expert on the novelist and short story writer Joseph Conrad, (see Vol. 1) and as one of the most significant contemporary writers on the Middle East, especially the Palestinian question and the plight of Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Although he is not a trained historian, his Orientalism (1978) is one of the most stimulating critical evaluations of traditional Western writing on Middle Eastern history, societies, and literature. In the controversial Covering Islam (1981), he examined how the Western media have biased Western perspectives on the Middle East. A Palestinian by birth, Said has sought to show how Palestinian history differs from the rest of Arabic history because of the encounter with Jewish settlers and to present to Western readers a more broadly representative Palestinian position than they usually obtain from Western sources. Said is presently Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia, editor of Arab Studies Quarterly, and chair of the board of trustees of the Institute of Arab Studies. He is a member of the Palestinian National Council as well as the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

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