After the Last Sky

Born in Jerusalem in 1935, Edward W. Said was one of the world's most celebrated, outspoken, and influential public intellectuals until his death on September 24, 2003. He is the author of more than twenty books that have been translated into thirty-six languages, including Beginnings (1975); The Question of Palestine (1979); the internationally acclaimed Orientalism (1979); Covering Islam (1980); The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983); After the Last Sky (1986); Musical Elaborations (1991); Culture and Imperialism (1993); Out of Place: A Memoir (1999); Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (2001); Power, Politics, and Culture (2001); and Freud and the Non-European (2003). He began teaching at Columbia University in 1963 and became University Professor of English and Comparative Literature there in 1992. He was a past president of the Modern Language Association and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and the American Philosophical Society. Said was the recipient of numerous prizes and distinctions-including twenty honorary doctorates-and he was first U.S. citizen to receive the prestigious Sultan Owais Prize.

When Said shows us the Palestinian experience min al-dakhil, from the inside, he means not the inside of the place, but the inside of the mind. Palestine becomes a state of mind. And that is what makes the book so exceptional. It is an extended voyage through the mind of exile. The Nation The power and magic of [Said and Mohr's] collective statement lies in this--no matter how displaced or dispossessed, a decisive border separates the native and the tourist. Jerusalem Post A very personal text, and a very moving one, about an internal struggle: the anguish of living with displacement, with exile... The most beautiful piece of prose... about what it means to be a Palestinian. The Guardian