? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

The Question of Palestine by Edward W. Said, the grandfather of Palestinian intellectual thought, sits alongside the prolific and many editioned Orientalism as one of the books where he intends to unpack the complexities of our region through his Palestinian eyes.

Calling himself an exile and living in the US and communicating with his compatriots in Palestine and abroad, this book allows him to provide a perspective in a method and language that the west can understand.

Often deemed as the book that made Palestinians a subject of political and academic thought, he also regularly updated the book to ensure that he includes the most recent regional changes, wars in Lebanon, the Gulf War, and the Intifada.

Although not a historian, Said culminated the history of the contested land and people in the book. He looked at the impact of treaties, conventions and decisions on the people of Palestine and its neighbors through this volume to extend the Palestinian experience to the west.

Today, as several years ago, his book is as relevant as it renders the efforts that continue in the middle east to define the situation where two different peoples collided in one of history’s longest, and most anguishing, disputes.

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