Summary
Palestinian author of The Question of Palestine (1979), written during 1977 and the early part of 1978 as a political essay putting a broadly representative Palestinian position before the American reader.
Details
- Said writes as a Palestinian himself, not as a detached observer, and says he has tried to be aware of Palestinian weaknesses and failings as a people (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.10 / printed p.ix).
- The book arises in his case from active participation, while in exile, in the quest for Palestinian self-determination; to explain one’s sense of oneself as a Palestinian to the West, where he lives, is to feel embattled, an outlaw of sorts or at any rate very much an outsider (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.19 / printed p.xviii).
- He refers the reader to his study of what he has called Orientalism for the long Western tradition of enmity toward Islam and the Orient on which Zionism drew (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.47 / printed p.26).
- The book’s About the Author page names him as the author of Orientalism, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, and Beginnings: Intention and Method, living in New York City; the publisher’s back cover identifies him as a Palestinian by birth and a member of the Palestinian National Council (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.288, p.291).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Orientalism, Representation, Farid Haddad, Rashid Hussein