Question of Palestine

This original and deeply provocative book was the first to make Palestine the subject of a serious debate – one that remains as critical as ever. With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and an exile’s passion (he is Palestinian by birth), Edward Said traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied – as well as in the conscience of the West. For anyone interested in this region and its future, The Question of Palestine remains the most useful and authoritative account available.

‘[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, ‘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, ‘When Edward Said died in September 2003, after a decade-long battle against leukemia, he was probably the best-known intellectual in the world.... Over three decades, virtually single-handedly, he wedged open a conversation in America about Israel, Palestine and the Palestinians. In so doing he performed an inestimable public service at considerable personal risk.’— Tony Judt, ‘Edward Said is among the truly important intellectuals of our century.’— Nadine Gordimer

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.