Out of Place

Born in Jerusalem in 1935, Edward Said spent much of his youth in Cairo and Lebanon. Out of Place is an act of emotional archaeology of that time, bringing to life people and places many of which no longer exist. In this unstintingly candid memoir – dominated by his ferociously demanding ‘Victorian’ father and his adored, inspiring yet ambivalent mother – Said traces his growing sense of himself as an outsider: Arab but Christian, Palestinian but the holder of a US Passport, having an improbably British first name yoked to an Arabic surname.