NEW FROM EDWARD W. SAID
This fall, find three new editions of Edward W. Said's celebrated works reissued by Vintage Books.
Beginnings
Edward W. Said
From one of the world's most beloved and outspoken public intellectuals comes an illuminating book on the nature of criticism.
"Readers will be surprised, stimulated, instructed, impressed."―The New Yorker
“What is a beginning? What must one do in order to begin? What is special about beginning as an activity or a moment or a place?”
So begins Beginnings, a scintillating work of criticism by Edward W. Said, author of Orientalism, The Question of Palestine, and other seminal works, and one of the most lauded public intellectuals of our time. Tracing humankind’s diverse understandings of what it means to begin throughout history, Said argues that “beginning” is itself a method, the first step in the creation of meaning. It’s what sparks a break from preexisting tradition, and it’s what authorizes new texts to be.
As ever, Said insists on a criticism that is both humane and socially responsible. Beginnings is about much more than writing: it is about imagination and action as well as the constraints on freedom and invention that come from achieving human intention. The result is a classic and necessary treatise on the role of the intellectual and the worth of criticism.
Listen to a Sample from Beginnings
Reflections on Exile
Edward W. Said
From one of the world's most beloved and respected public intellectuals comes a collection of essays examining culture, the literary canon, and the ever-shifting terrain of history.
"This is surely a major work, among the most provocative and cogent accounts of culture and the humanities that America has produced in recent years."―Martha C. Nussbaum, The New York Times Book Review
Edward W. Said’s writings have transformed the field of literary studies. In this bracing collection of essays, one of the most beloved and respected public intellectuals of our time examines culture, the literary canon, and the ever-shifting terrain of history.
Said’s topics are many and diverse, from the Hollywood heroics of Tarzan to the machismo of Ernest Hemingway to the shades of difference that divide Alexandria and Cairo. In the title essay, the widely admired Reflections on Exile, he weighs his own estrangement from his home country and the fate of the Palestinian people against the literary canon’s most romanticized fugitives. “What could be more intransigent than the conflict between Zionist Jews and Arab Palestinians?” Said asks. “Palestinians feel that they have been turned into exiles by the proverbial people of exile.”
The culmination of thirty-five years of scholarship, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays is an invigorating and life-affirming achievement, a work of intellectual, emotional, and moral rigor.
Listen to a Sample from Reflections on Exile
The World, the Text, and the Critic
Edward W. Said
A sweeping and intellectually rigorous work of literary criticism that moves the field forward, from one of the preeminent public scholars.
“[Said’s] book is relaxed and discursive, original, immensely learned, fluently written.”―John Bayley, The New York Times Book Review
Edward W. Said, author of Beginnings and the controversial yet seminal Orientalism, is one of the most acclaimed public intellectuals of our time. In this sweeping and rigorous work of literary criticism, he pushes the field even further forward. Moving from Derrida to Foucault, from Marxism to psychoanalysis, and from Swift to Conrad, Said argues that the dogmas of the dominant culture have crippled our engagement with literature, forcing a text to meet the requirements of theory while ignoring the tethers that bind it to the living world.
Provocatively, Said advocates for freedom of consciousness and for responsiveness to history; to the exigencies of the text; to political, social, and human values; and to the heterogeneity of human experience. The World, the Text, and the Critic asks daring questions, investigates problems of urgent significance, and gives a subtle yet powerful new meaning to the enterprise of criticism in modern society.
Listen to a Sample from The World, the Text, and the Critic
AVAILABLE NOW
Four new editions of Edward W. Said’s groundbreaking works, each featuring insightful new forewords. From one of the world’s most beloved and respected public intellectuals, these titles reflect Said’s scholarship on our understanding of culture, politics, literature, and identity.
The Question of Palestine
Edward W. Said
New forward by Saree Makdisi
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 a new foreword by Saree Makdisi
"A compelling call for identity and justice." —Anthony Lewis
"Books such as Mr. Said's need to be written and read in the hope that understanding will provide a better chance of survival." —The New York Times Book Review
With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and an exile's passion (he is Palestinian by birth), Edward W. 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. He has updated this landmark work to portray the changed status of Palestine and its people in light of such developments as the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the intifada, the Gulf War, and the ongoing MIddle East peace initiative. For anyone interested in this region and its future, The Question of Palestine remains the most useful and authoritative account available.
Listen to a Sample from The Question of Palestine
COVERING ISLAM
by Edward W. Said
New foreword by Laleh Khalili
In this classic work, the author of Culture and Imperialism reveals the hidden agendas and distortions of fact that underlie even the most "objective" coverage of the Islamic world. • With a new foreword by Laleh Khalili
"No one stuyding the relations between the West and the decolonizing world can ignore Mr. Said's work." —The New York Times Book Review
From the Iranian hostage crisis through the Gulf War and the bombing of the World Trade Center, the American news media have portrayed "Islam" as a monolithic entity, synonymous with terrorism and religious hysteria. At the same time, Islamic countries use "Islam" to justify unrepresentative and often repressive regimes. Combining political commentary with literary criticism, Covering Islam continues Edward Said's lifelong investigation of the ways in which language not only describes but also defines political reality.
Orientalism
by Edward W. Said
New foreword by Ussama Makdisi
A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is—decades after its first publication—one of the most important books written about our divided world. • With a new foreword by Ussama Makdisi
"Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." —The New York Times
In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding.
Culture and Imperialism
by Edward W. Said
New foreword by Hari Kunzru
A landmark work from the author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. • With new foreword by Hari Kunzru
"Grandly conceived . . . urgently written and urgently needed. . . . No one studying the relations between the metropolitan West and the decolonizing world can ignore Mr. Said's work.'
—The New York Times Book Review
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from Mansfield Park to Heart of Darkness and Aida. Yet most cultural critics continue to see these phenomena as separate. Edward Said looks at these works alongside those of such writers as W. B. Yeats, Chinua Achebe, and Salman Rushdie to show how subject peoples produced their own vigorous cultures of opposition and resistance. Vast in scope and stunning in its erudition, Culture and Imperialism reopens the dialogue between literature and the life of its time.
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Edward W. Said
Edward W. Said
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward W. Said
Edward W. Said was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, raised in Jerusalem and Cairo, and educated in the United States, where he attended Princeton (B.A. 1957) and Harvard (M.A. 1960; Ph.D. 1964). In 1963, he began teaching at Columbia University, where he was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature. He died in 2003 in New York City.
He is the author of twenty-two books which have been translated into 35 languages, including Orientalism (1978); The Question of Palestine (1979); Covering Islam (1980); The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983); Culture and Imperialism (1993); Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East Peace Process (1996); and Out of Place: A Memoir (1999). Besides his academic work, he wrote a twice-monthly column for Al-Hayat and Al-Ahram; was a regular contributor to newspapers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; and was the music critic for The Nation.
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