In 2000 Harvard University Press celebrated the lifetime output of Edward Said, whom it called “the most impressive, consequential and elegant critic of our time,” by publishing a 656-page collection of his articles. Under the title Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, the publishers observed that Said’s own life experience as a Palestinian paralleled those of the people of the region: “the fact of his own exile and the fate of the Palestinians have given both form and force to the questions Said has pursued.”
The concept of exile is one that dominated Said’s writings.
The concept of exile is one that dominated Said’s writings. In his seminal work Orientalism in 1978, Said not only defined the people of the Middle East as victims of Western imperialism, but also included himself among those who suffered. He claimed the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 had seen his extended family expelled from their home in Jerusalem. Along with thousands of other Arabs at that time, they became refugees, forced to migrate and re-establish themselves in other countries. And although his own future was subsequently secured by the American education system, he still promoted himself as one whose suffering persisted. “My own experiences of these matters,” he said in Orientalism, “are in part what made me write this book”:
