Reflections on Exile

With their powerful blend of political and aesthetic concerns, Edward W. Said's writings have transformed the field of literary studies. As in the title essay, the widely admired "Reflections on Exile," the fact of his own exile and the fate of the Palestinians have given both form and the force of intimacy to the questions Said has pursued. Taken together, these essays--from the famous to those that will surprise even Said's most assiduous followers--afford rare insight into the formation of a critic and the development of an intellectual vocation. Said's topics are many and diverse, from the movie heroics of Tarzan to the machismo of Ernest Hemingway to the shades of difference that divide Alexandria and Cairo. He offers major reconsiderations of writers and artists such as George Orwell, Giambattista Vico, Georg Lukacs, R. P. Blackmur, E. M. Cioran, Naguib Mahfouz, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Walter Lippman, Samuel Huntington, Antonio Gramsci, and Raymond Williams. Invigorating, edifying, acutely attentive to the vying pressures of personal and historical experience, his book is a source of immeasurable intellectual delight.

ISBN 1847085970   DEWEY edition DC23 ISBN13 9781847085979 (What's this?)   Pages 656 Publisher Granta Books   Published in London Imprint Granta Books   Height (mm) 234 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 153 Publication date 02 Aug 2012   Academic level General DEWEY 814.54

The collection will serve as an ideal primer in the evolution of a critical position that established [Said's] international reputation--and gained him some fierce opponents--as a leading intellectual voice in the humanities...One of the many pleasures of this volume lies in Said's command of the personal essay...This collection contains a variety of essays that equally display his aesthetic refinement, his comparative perspective, his interdisciplinary spirit, and his ideological conviction.--Philip Mosley "Comparative Literature Studies "

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