Preface by Saree Makdisi<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fitzcarraldo Classic No.7 | French paperback with flaps, 376 pages<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Published 21 November 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A major work by one of the great public intellectuals of the twentieth century, The Question of Palestine<\/em> was the first book to narrate the modern Palestinian experience in English. Edward Said\u2019s project to \u2018bring Palestine into history\u2019 was unquestionably a success \u2013 there is no longer a question of whether Palestine had a history before colonization \u2013 and yet Palestinian self-determination is as distant as ever. With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism<\/em> and shaped by his own life in exile in New York, Said\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018This reissue of The Question of Palestine<\/em> only lends more weight and value to Edward Said\u2019s work, to his vision and analysis, to the enduring need for his core principles of justice and empathy. Principles that have perhaps never been as severely tested as they are today. Passionate and patient, the book displays all the features that made Said a great thinker and a powerful advocate, whose absence continues to be felt.\u2019 \u2018In this seminal text, Edward W. Said stridently diagnoses western hypocrisy and makes the case for Palestinian liberation, paving the way for so many thinkers who came after him. I wish it were not so, but The Question of Palestine<\/em> is just as relevant now as it was in 1979.\u2019 \u2018Edward Said is among the truly important intellectuals of our century.\u2019 \u2018When Edward Said died in September 2003, after a decade-long battle against leukemia, he was probably the best-known intellectual in the world\u2026. 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.\u2019 \u2018[A]rguably New York\u2019s most famous public intellectual after Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag, and America\u2019s most prominent advocate for Palestinian rights.\u2019 Edward W. Said (1935\u20132003) was one of the world\u2019s 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<\/em>, Culture and Imperialism<\/em> and Out of Place<\/em>. He was also a music critic, opera scholar, pianist and the most eloquent spokesman for the Palestinian cause in the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Ahdaf Soueif, author of The Map of Love<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Nadine Gordimer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Tony Judt<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Pankaj Mishra, New Yorker<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n