Edward Said: Out of Place

1999, Alfred A.Knopf,Inc.
295 pages
available from the Scientific bookshop,Salah ed Din street,Jerusalem
Price:NIS 130

From a people that has done very little so far to document their personal experiences of exile and dispossession, Edward Said's memoirs "Out of Place"are an exceptional contribution towards a more profound understanding of the Palestinian people and their contemporary history. An internationally acclaimed intellectual and academic,Edward Said's book is "an extraordinary story of exile,a narrative of many departures,a celebration of an irrecoverable past."Even though the decision to write his memoirs came as a result of a fatal medical diagnosis in 1991,in these recollections Said "rediscovers the Arab landscape of his early years". Born in Jerusalem in 1935, moving to school in Cairo, summers in Beirut,camp in Maine,boarding school in Massachusetts,and college at Princeton University,the book is underscored by "the confusion of identity as Said had to come to terms with the dissonance of being an

American citizen,a Christian and a Palestinian, and,ultimately,an outsider."