SAID, Edward W
"The Pen And
The Sword"
Conversations with David Barsamian
£7.95
pb. 1 87317623 6.186
culture/politics/literature
"Said's responses to David Barsamian's informed questioning affirms, yet again, Said's unique position as a non-compromising revisionist historian"
- News International
By means of precise, informed questioning David Barsamian leads us into the brilliant mind of Edward W. Said, and shares his profound insights into Palestine, imperialism and cultural conflict.
Topics covered in their conversation include:
- The predicament of the liberation struggle in Palestine
- The decline of the American Left
- Further elaborations on Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism
- The Western generalisations of Arab culture
- Imperialism as seen through the prism of Western literature: Joseph Conrad, Jane Austin, T.S. Elliot, Albert Camus, V.S. Naipaul, Amos Oz and others
"Edward Said is among those rare persons in whose life there is coincidence of ideals and reality, a meeting of abstract principle and individual behaviour."
- Eqbal Ahmad from his introduction
Edward W. Said was born in Jerusalem, Palestine and attended schools there and in Cairo. He received his B.A. from Princeton and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. He is University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia. He is the author of Orientalism, The Question of Palestine, Covering Islam, After the Last Sky, and Culture and Imperialism.
