The Invented Exile of Edward Said

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.”