From the Iranian hostage crisis throught the Gulf War and the WorldTrade Center bombing, America has been haunted by a specter called "Islam". As portrayed by the news media-and religious hysteria. at the same time, Islamic countries use "Islam" to justify unrepresentative and often repressive regimes.
From one of the most important intellectuals of our time comes an extraordinary story of exile and a celebration of an irrecoverable past. A fatal medical diagnosis in 1991 convinced Edward Said that he should leave a record of where he was born and spent his childhood, and so with this memoir he rediscovers the lost Arab world of his early years in Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt. Said write…