A major work by one of the great public intellectuals of the twentieth century, The Question of Palestine was the first book to narrate the modern Palestinian experience in English. Edward Said's project to 'bring Palestine into history' was unquestionably a success - there is no longer a question of whether Palestine had a history before colonization - and yet Palestinian self-determination is as distant as ever. With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and shaped by his own life in exile in New York, Said's account of the traumatic national encounter of the Palestinian people with Zionism is still as pertinent and incisive today as it was on first publication in 1979.
Edward Said (1935-2003) was one of the world's most influential literary and cultural critics. Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, he was the author of twenty-two books, including Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism and Out of Place. He was also a music critic, opera scholar, pianist and the most eloquent spokesman for the Palestinian cause in the West.
'For those of us who see the struggle between Eastern and Western descriptions of the world as both an internal and an external struggle, Edward Said has for many years been an especially important voice.' Salman Rushdie
'[A]rguably New York's most famous public intellectual after Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag, and America's most prominent advocate for Palestinian rights.' Pankaj Mishra, New Yorker
'Edward Said is among the truly important intellectuals of our century.' Nadine Gordimer
