This long awaited collection brings together Edward Said’s essays on literary and cultural topics from over three decades. The facts of Said’s own exile and the fate of the Palestinians have given both form and intimacy to the questions he has pursued. Taken together, these essays give a rare insight into the formation of a critic and the development of intellectual vocation.

Edward Said is one of the most important and elegant critics of our time.
Several key debates in the humanities over the last thirty years are taken up and given definitive treatment.
Also offers major reconsiderations of writers and artists including George Orwell, Joseph Conrad, Antonio Gramsci and Raymond Williams.