This book is a great overview and as noted by many others, a true work of literary genius. Colonial subjects, such as Said himself, have a hard time placing themselves in the mess of Colonialism and the supposed Post-Colonial era we live in and this book aids in that coming to terms process. Said manages to marry the subjectivity of his reality with the brilliant grasp of academia. A Must read by all, to gain a better idea of the world and times we live in.

Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, Edward Said claims that Western ideas of the `Orient' are not based upon objective facts but are created through academic and cultural `discourses' which serve to promote Western imperialism - often despite `liberal' intentions.

This mythical `East' is the antithesis of the West, a negative or inversion of the 'Occident' which is used to define *both* in binary opposition to each other, and to facilitate the political and domination of the East.

However in order to demonstrate the existence of this `Orientalism' Said falls back on an equally stereotypical and monolithic `West' which he constructs entirely from the carefully selected writings of a handful of 19th Century middle-class, white, male English and French authors.

This tactic not only ignores or misrepresents a large body of Western authors sympathetic to the East and sensitive to differences within it, but also glosses over Western heterogenities of class, race, sex, religion and generation in order to manufacture a homogenous `Occident' devoid of differences.

Said is as guilty of *Occidentalism* as those he criticises are of *Orientalism*.

Said fails to provide any evidence that the `West' defines itself in binary opposition to a mythical `East' that Western scholars have created for just this purpose; he simply *manufactures* the kind of `West' necessary to explain the myths about the `East' that he himself has constructed from a very limited number of Western sources.

He has created his own mythical `East' *and* `West' from a small number of literary texts which he then projects onto others and thinks he has *discovered* rather than *invented*.

The book came on time (before college started) and it was in lovely condition :)

It is interesting, as a brazilian, to realize Said's resentment resembles one of a similar kind which portraits Latin America as the victim of American Imperialism. Latin american intellectuals share the same hate, anger and paranoia towards US.
This may be why to this day brazilian academics force this appaling book down their students throats.
You dont need to be a clinical psychologist to figure this one out: a scape goat is a helpful tool to cope with one's own stupid decisions in life.

It is interesting, as a brazilian, to realize Said's resentment resembles one of a similar kind which portraits Latin America as the victim of American Imperialism. Latin american intellectuals share the same hate, anger and paranoia towards US.
This may be why to this day brazilian academics force this appaling book down their students throats.
You dont need to be a clinical psychologist to figure this one out: a scape goat is a helpful tool to cope with one's own stupid decisions in life.

The late Edward Said's "Orientalism" influenced an entire generation of Arab and Muslim scholars, not to mention Middle Eastern Studies departments in universities throughout the West, to believe that the Islamic world was from the start a passive victim of the West. Whenever you hear or read about Western abuses to the "Other" or justifications of violence directed at Westerners, Said's text is often the reason why.

For that reason, "Orientalism" is a work whose influence cannot be overstated.

That being said, the historical errors in the text are legion, and apparent to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history.

According to Said:

-the eastern Mediterranean was controlled, not by the Ottomans, but by England and France in the 1600s
-Egypt was annexed by England
-the first Muslims conquered Turkey before taking North Africa, when it was the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century who took Anatolia
-Pakistan was a British colony separate from India, and not created upon the British withdrawal from India
-Portugal dominated the Far East until the 19th century, when Portuguese power diminished there in the 17th century

Among others.

And so I give it 3 stars. For all it's errors it should merit just 1 star, but to this day it remains a highly influential text. So like that old forgery the "Donation of Constantine," its importance comes not from actual fact, but from its wide acceptance.

Orientalism is an easy to understand book by Edward Said, a must read for anyone interested in the current conflicts between East and West. How the creation of the "Orient" is a necessity to justify the West's aggression since the Middle Age's. His analysis is of the Near East, but is applicable to all non Western cultures.

The old stone thrower is at it again, expounding his one-sided, biased view of history. Said made a career of being a highly-visible defender of the Palestinians; was even a member of the PLO executive council. Too bad he was silent about Yasir Arafat's theft of hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for the Palestinians. He would rather blame the Jews for the Palestinians misfortunes, which they were the SOLE author of. What hypocrisy!

Orientalism simplistically might be classified as the application of specialized knowledge developed by Occidentals then used by Occidentals to the long term detriment or destruction of Oriental values and states. Said carries the reader from century old philological works to area studies conducted by think tank specialists in Washington. It is the story of East vs. West raging since the 7th century and may rage for centuries to come

It is not an easy journey to follow Said's details, but he offers insights to ponder regarding East-West relationships in these dangerous times. As an engineer trained in science and mathematics, I found Said's discussion of the schematic authority of written materials fascinating. It is easier to become lost in worlds founded mainly on opinions and prestige than on rigorous applications of first principles of science.

I would have preferred additional materials from the post WW11 era and less on the writers of the 19th century, but he is writing for an audience that will be hostile and he goes to pains to identify his sources and his reasoning over many pages. Very worthwhile read.

I could not stop reading this book. It is difficult at times given that it's serious criticism and I thought I had given up criticism when I left academia behind, but for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of why the US is in Iraq, why there are so many autocratic regimes in the Middle East, why the West cannot find real solutions for the plague that is terrorism, and why there is terrorism in the first place...this books is a good place to start. Said lays the ground work of colonialism and its repercussions.

but it's not, and sometimes one has to grow up and read challenging but important criticism. A seminal book for all readers.

For all of Said's erudition and intelligence, Orientalism -- fraught as it is with redundancies and obscure writing -- is a maddening read. Said has been taken to task by specialist reviewers (historians in particular) for playing fast and loose with the sources he employs. Orientalism is a very angry text. As a humanist, a human being, and a student of history, I can only concede the legitimacy of Said's anger and sympathize with the man. Sympathies aside, however, as a critical reader I am dismayed by the lack of rigor in Orientalism, the absolutism of its major thesis (that all 'western' students of the Middle/Near East are imperialists or abettors of imperialism...), and the failure of its author to recognize the ways in which his own deep biases guide his analysis. In writing these remarks, I should note that upon finishing Orientalism I read several excellent critical reviews. A few of these reviews were accompanied by responses from Said; these were typically short on substance, long on ad hominem, giving credence to my impression that Orientalism is, above all, a political and ideological screed. Though Orientalism must be credited with opening an important dialogue, in the academy and beyond, and for fostering a certain kind of consciousness raising, it must be faulted for its faults as well. It is a shoddy piece of scholarship.

For all of Said's erudition and intelligence, Orientalism -- fraught with redundancies and obscure writing -- is a maddening read. Said has been taken to task by specialist reviewers (historians in particular) for playing fast and loose with the sources he employs. Orientalism is a very angry text. As a humanist, a human being, and a student of history, I can only concede the legitimacy of Said's anger and sympathize with the man. Sympathies aside, however, as a critical reader I am dismayed by the lack of rigor in Orientalism, the absolutism of its major thesis (that all 'western' students of the Middle/Near East are imperialists or abettors of imperialism...), and the failure of its author to recognize the ways in which his own deep biases guide his analysis. In writing these remarks, I should note that upon finishing Orientalism I read several excellent critical reviews. A few of these reviews were accompanied by responses from Said; these were typically short on substance, long on ad hominem, giving credence to my impression that Orientalism is, above all, a political and ideological screed. Though Orientalism must be credited with opening an important dialogue, in the academy and beyond, and for fostering a certain kind of consciousness raising, it must be faulted for its faults as well. It is a shoddy piece of scholarship.

This text is a MUST for anyone who is interested in the Middle East, Orientalism, Arab-Israeli conflict and any of the aspects related to the Arab region and identity. It is also a useful book for anyone who is looking at the notion of the 'Other', whether that be in terms of race, gender, religion, politics etc.....

This work should be required reading for all university students,especially at the graduate level. Said has provided a comprehesive, factual, and thought-provoking work. He is missed in the scholarly arena, yet his works are immortal!

This work should be required reading for all university students,especially at the graduate level. Said has provided a comprehesive, factual, and thought-provoking work. He is missed in the scholarly arena, yet his works are immortal!

Edward Said, created a proble and made a career of the Israel Palestine Conflict, and conviently died before he could also resolve the death and destruction he brought to the Arab Palestinians. He was a one man destruction derby under the guise of poetry, linguistics and hate and he helped stir up anti Israel and anti Jewish hatred on every University he spoke at. Hopefully, this "vintage" book will become no longer relevant, ans disappear.

Edward Said, created a proble and made a career of the Israel Palestine Conflict, and conviently died before he could also resolve the death and destruction he brought to the Arab Palestinians. He was a one man destruction derby under the guise of poetry, linguistics and hate and he helped stir up anti Israel and anti Jewish hatred on every University he spoke at. Hopefully, this "vintage" book will become no longer relevant, ans disappear.

Said's book has, sadly, been hugely influential on thousands of university students, their professors, and many living in the islamic world. His book should not be read without concurrently reading Ibn Warraq's critique _Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism_.

Said lays the blame for nearly everything wrong in the islamic world at the feet of the West, and thus helped entrench the culture of victimhood that feeds into suicide bombings and riots against political cartoons. By authorin this book, Said confirmed his place in History as an irresponsible poseur in scholarly trappings.

Seemingly unable to come to terms with the Muslim world, Orientalism is as timely to read today as it was when it was first published in 1978. Edward Said offered a much needed examination of many of the texts that had come to represent the corpus of "Orientalism" in Western Humanities classes. He went back to the late 18th and early 19th century to set the basis for this new field of study that emerged from the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt. What began as an investigation of the monuments of the Near East soon developed into a study of the people, their culture and their religions. The only problem was that these studies treated the "Orientals" like anthropological specimens, never getting beyond general categories and treating Islam like it was some perversion of Christianity, inspired by an anarchist in robes.

Said provided many textual references so you don't have to read the books to get an idea where he is coming from. He charted the long lineage of Orientalism up to the late 20th century through a wide variety of British and French writers. He drew distinctions between the more racist writers and those who had their heart in the right place, even if they couldn't completely get beyond their Western conceits. He paused to analyze such writers as Nerval, Flaubert, Burton, Gibb and Massignon, who penetrated deeper into the Muslim world than other writers. But, here too he pointed out where their analyses failed to give a complete picture and where their egos (particularly that of Burton) got into the way of their observations.

The book may be rough going for those who are looking for sharp, concise analyses of the writers in question. Said chose to look at the way these writers interpreted the "Orient" in a parabolical way that may be frustrating for many readers. He focused mainly on the Near East, specifically the Arab world, showing how these academic studies came to shape the British and French foreign policy in the region. Muslims found their religion objectified to the point of miscomprehension and themselves reduced to a servant class in the minds of British and French colonialists. Said bluntly illustrated how the United States inherited this legacy in the second half of the 20th century, particularly in H.A.R. Gibb, who came to the US after establishing his career as an "Orientalist" in Great Britain. Said noted how many American universities in the late 50's and early 60's perpetuated these Arab stereotypes without much questioning taking place.

Edward Said was a gifted writer who understood the semiology of these texts, and built up an impressive body of work in his lifetime. He examined the situation in Palestine, his birthplace, in detail in The Question of Palestine, and has written numerous publications on the cultural and political conflicts in the region. However, this book is the base text for understanding Said's larger body of work.

In an age where Muslim-bashing has become the norm moreso than the exception, Orientalism is as timely to read as it was when it was first published in 1978. Edward Said offered a much needed examination of many of the texts that had come to represent the corpus of "Orientalism" in Western Humanities classes. He went back to the late 18th and early 19th century to set the basis for this new field of study that emerged from the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt. What began as an investigation of the monuments of the Near East soon developed into a study of the people, their culture and their religions. The only problem was that these studies treated the "Orientals" like anthropological specimens, never getting beyond general categories and treating Islam like it was some perversion of Christianity, inspired by an anarchist in robes.

Said provided many textual references so you don't have to read the books to get an idea where he is coming from. He charted the long lineage of Orientalism up to the late 20th century through a wide variety of British and French writers. He drew distinctions between the more racist writers and those who had their heart in the right place, even if they couldn't completely get beyond their Western conceits. He paused to analyze such writers as Nerval, Flaubert, Burton, Gibb and Massignon, who penetrated deeper into the Muslim world than other writers. But, here too he pointed out where their analyses failed to give a complete picture and where their egos (particularly that of Burton) got into the way of their observations.

The book may be rough going for those who are looking for sharp, concise analyses of the writers in question. Said chose to look at the way these writers interpreted the "Orient" in a parabolical way that may be frustrating for many readers. He focused mainly on the Near East, specifically the Arab world, showing how these academic studies came to shape the British and French foreign policy in the region. Muslims found their religion objectified to the point of miscomprehension and themselves reduced to a servant class in the minds of British and French colonialists. Said bluntly illustrated how the United States inherited this legacy in the second half of the 20th century, particularly in H.A.R. Gibb, who came to the US after establishing his career as an "Orientalist" in Great Britain. Said noted how many American universities in the late 50's and early 60's perpetuated these Arab stereotypes without much questioning taking place.

Edward Said was a gifted writer who understood the semiology of these texts, and built up an impressive body of work in his lifetime. He examined the situation in Palestine, his birthplace, in detail in The Question of Palestine, and has written numerous publications on the cultural and political conflicts in the region. However, this book is the base text for understanding Said's larger body of work.

Orientalism is the classic work of one of the greatest minds of our times. I am, however, disappointed that Amazon posted Al Kruse's "review" in which he claims to have met Said and that Said confessed to Kruse that he was a total fraud. How convenient since Mr. Said recently died that these wild claims cannot be substantiated or refuted. I too met Mr. Said and I have the photos to prove it. In my conversation with him Said spoke passionately and intelligently about western perceptions of the Arab world. I suggest readers delve into Said's older works and move up to his more recent writings including his autobiography, Out of Place, so that they can experience the works of one of the most remarkable people of our times.

I once attended a lecture by Edward Said. Afterwards, I got some private time with him and told him how most of his arguments against Israel were flat out wrong.

He candidly told me, off camera and off the record, that I was indeed right. But he said he had the option of being intellectually honest or to keep on with his ideas.

If he was to be intellectually honest, it would mean stating that the Arab world is the antithesis of democracy and that Israel has a right to exist. That to him, meant he would be a marked man and dead in a matter of months.

To tow the party line and repeat the same lies about Israel meant that he had a professorship at Columbia, and the respect of the world.

He knew that Arafat was a complete fraud, but the world would rather deal with Arafat's lies than having to recognize Israel.

He said we live in a crazy world, but that is life.

In conclusion, realize who you are dealing with here. This is simply the propagation of lies.

Given the amount that has already been said here about Said's `Orientalism', it is worth just summarising, as I understand it, what the book is about and the kind of readership it will be of interest to.

What is the book about? `Orientalism' deals with Western (mainly British, French and American) colonial representation of `the Orient' (mainly the Middle East). In other words, it is about how the West saw the East.

What are the book's arguments? Said demonstrates how Western representations of the Orient were not grounded in reality but were in fact constructed in opposition to whatever the West saw itself as - rational, liberal, progressive, dynamic. In the process, the Orient came to be represented as the irrational and decadent `Other' to the West. More controversially, Said contends that this was a means of imposing cultural domination on the Orient. Said uses Foucault's notion of discourse (an institutionalised way of thinking) to show how Western `knowledge' of the East gave it power over the East.

Why is the book significant? `Orientalism' has created shockwaves throughout academia and beyond since its publication in 1978. For one, it revolutionises the way we think about European empire - that imperial power was enforced not just politically or economically, but also culturally. The work has since spawned a whole sub-field of cultural studies on European imperialism, or more broadly, Western cultural influence. Said's textual deconstruction of colonial literature also paved the way various schools of postcolonial theorists concerned with colonial literary criticism. These ideas still reverberate with contemporary concerns, especially America's role in shaping in Middle East.

What are the books defects? Many of the shortcomings of the book have already been addressed here, but I shall highlight some of them briefly. Firstly, Said presents a monolithic picture of `the West' in the very same way he accuses them of representing `the East'; in reality, `the West' was and is of course far less homogenous that Said suggests and the discourse of the Oriental `Other' is but one of many other discourses. Secondly, he neglects to demonstrate how the Orient influenced the West as well; cultural influence was bidirectional. Thirdly, Said's personal engagement with the subject as a Palestinian living in America undoubtedly distorts or at least biases his judgements. These are amongst the reasons why I give the book only 4 out of 5 stars.

Despite these shortcomings, this seminal work is impossible to ignore and I would highly recommend it. I found the writing clear and forceful, and the arguments cogent. The extent to which the work has been cited, dissected and qualified is itself tribute to its immense influence, even twenty years on. A must-read.

 I will not waste time summarizing Edward Said's "Orientalism" here, since I am sure the reader can find this in other reviews at this site. Therefore, let us dive right in and consider the quality of the work.
Alas, anger seethes from every paragraph of this work. On the face of it, who can blame him, an expatriate Palestinian. However, his righteous anger very quickly becomes a liability instead of an asset as he sinks into ad hominem attacks on those with whom he disagrees, in particular the poor Bernard
Lewis. This unseemly and useless display is cloaked in a prodigious erudition.
However, after one wades through the erudition, one finds sophistry and McLuhanism. (Marshall McLuhan presented a novel, germane, and essentially true picture of television's real impact, but over-killed his thesis with a barrage of examples that went beyond convincing to the threshold of caricature.)
Said's anger is well and truly founded, but it becomes self-destructive in its absoluteness. In an ironic turn he becomes just another fundamentalist, this time in service of the truth. But his absolutist,fundamentalist views are inevitably and intrinsically flawed. Thus, like McLuhan, we get the message
while we reject the body of the communication.
Accordingly, after reading "Orientalism" one is left with a sense of disappointment; one wants to thank him for the alert, yet one also wishes he had focused more on the specific transgressions of the alleged Orientalists. One is happy to be reminded of the high dynamic spatial and temporal aspects of, dare I use the word, culture, but one shrinks at his unholy abhorrence of categories - like culture, and Islam, and the Orient. In my opinion, Said's "Orientalism" is a good and useful idea nearly destroyed by the author's anger and erudition.
Approach at your peril, but if the matter interests you, see his blissfully shorter, though equally flawed,"Clash of Ignorance" which appeared in "The Nation" in October, 2001.

Ironically, the great Palestinian-American humanist scholar Edward Said wrote this essentially inaccurate book as a bold and pained cri du coeur two decades before the events of September 11th and the fresh entanglement by the West in the Middle East would render obvious its stature as required reading. One must not attempt to understand our world from the West without a careful listening to the late author's cry.

That sound emerges from a life of `humanistic critique' of the world's uniform-izing powers, whether these take academic, governmental, economic, or religious form. Said hopes that the watchword of `liberation' is in fact an unstoppable and developmental force in history, though he is more resigned than hopeful for results in his generation. `My goal in Orientalism', he explains, is to use humanistic critique to open up the fields of struggle, to introduce a longer sequence of thought and analysis to replace the short bursts of polemical, thought-stopping fury that so imprison us in labels and antagonistic debate whose goal is a belligerent collective identity rather than understanding and intellectual exchange.'

The truth, power, and heuristic value of Said's argument lie in the contraposition of `individual' with `collective' identity. So does its error.

The author believes that generalization, labeling, identification of collective or typical behaviors, and the like fundamentally mislead. He is correct about many of them, perhaps most. Yet this fundamentally anarchist principal would make his own work impossible and does not fairly treat the many generalizations about peoples and their struggles that can rightly be made in order to facilitate rather than impede the kind of `understanding' that Said so admirably desires.

In practice, Said is not so inflexible on this point as his theory might suggest. For this reason, he has given us a long book with a lot to say rather than a very short book with just one idea. This happy disconnect between theory and praxis is what makes his book-to say nothing of his body of work-so critical for `Western' (pardon the generalization and collective identity) people who must somehow come to understand what it is like to be studied, discussed, historically located, conquered, fought, `liberated', and studied again by people whose `positional superiority' makes humanistic interaction as peers almost impossible.

Said's `Introduction' (pp. 1-28) is one of those rare prefatory pieces that actually do justice to the book that ensues. The reading of it is both a joy and a satisfactory orientation to follows.

The book itself falls messily into three discursive chapters: `The Scope of Orientalism' (pp.31-110), `Orientalist structures and Restructures', and `Orientalism Now'. In the first of these breathtakingly well-read pieces, we are reminded of the Baconian principle that `knowledge is power'. The kind of knowledge produced by the quasi-canonical views of `the Orient' developed in colonizing Europe and inherited at a late date by an ascendant America is inextricably enmeshed in the exercise of power. It is not innocent knowing, but rather the systematic domestication of a reality that little matches the categories into which it is forced. This knowledge aspires to empirical obviousness, to objectivity, to the status of that which no reasonable (Western or enlightened Eastern) observe could deny. It is a reality in which the knower is indisputably on the side of imperial power and the known is a less fortunate entity over whom empire is justified in advance by the body of knowledge that is abbreviated as `Orientalism'. It is a schematized and theoretical knowledge based on very little interaction with the human objects that come under its purview. It is subordinating and hungry for a classical `fixed point' in the history of the culture under analysis, a (hopefully) literary moment to which all other encountered aspects and real-time human representatives of that culture can be compared and found wanting.

Said argues that such knowledge is a form of paranoia. Illuminated by his anecdotal suggestion that most of our renowned Orientalists did not like the `Orientals' they met, the claim of paranoia is too important an assertion to be skirted.

The author is particularly perceptive in his description of a `textual attitude' in part IV (`Crisis') of this first long chapter. For example, `It seems a common human failing to prefer the schematic authority of a text to the disorientations of direct encounters with the human. But is this failing constantly present, or are there circumstances that, more than others, make the textual attitude likely to prevail?' For Said, there are such circumstances and Orientalism falls victim to both of them. First, `One is when a human being confronts at close quarters something relatively unknown and threatening and previously distant ... A second situation favoring the textual attitude is the appearance of success'.

On the contrary, Said wants to name and thereby debunk the textual attitude with its false objectivizing, as he asserts in the programmatic statement of the book's sprawling second chapter (`Orientalist Structures and Restructures', pp. 111-197): `My thesis is that the essential aspects of modern Orientalist theory and practice (from which present-day Orientalism derives) can be understood, not as a sudden access of objective knowledge about the Orient, but as a set of structures inherited from the past, secularized, redisposed, and re-formed by such disciplines as philology, which in turn were naturalized, modernized, and laicized substitutes for (versions of) Christian supernaturalism.'

In this chapter, the author makes his boldest claims about the human deficiencies of the Orientalists: `We are immediately brought back to the realization that Orientalists, like many other early-nineteenth-century thinkers, conceive of humanity either in large collective terms or in abstract generalities. Orientalists are neither interested in nor capable of discussing individuals; instead artificial entities, perhaps with their roots in Herderian populism, predominate. There are Orientals, Asiatics, Semites, Muslims, Arabs, Jews, races, mentalities, nations, and the like ...' In his signature asyndetic prose, Said describes the ironies that immerse the nineteenth-century European traveler to the Orient, who retains his `European power, to comment on, acquire, possess everything around it. The Orientalist can imitate the Orient without the opposite being true.'

It is the cumulative, multi-layered power of Orientalism that makes Said consider it a menace rather than an irritation: `Orientalism can thus be regarded as a manner of regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study, dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient ... My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient's difference with its weakness.' The academic is sometimes a na?ve and well-meaning complicit: `Formally the Orientalist sees himself as accomplishing the union of Orient and Occident, but mainly by reasserting the technological, political, and cultural supremacy of the West. History, in such a union, is radically attenuated if not banished.'

Further, it is the seepage of Orientalist perception out of the academy and into the realm of policy and political power that render it, for Said, a dangerous element and, so, worthy of attention from Said's powerful pen. The author documents a number of examples in his final chapter.

The `Afterword' included in this 25th-anniversary volume (pp. 329-352) was written in 1994 and provided Said the opportunity to respond to accusations of non-Western bias and (laughably) Islamic fundamentalism. Chiefly, his defense against allegations that he has been partial-in several meanings of the word-is that he had written `a partisan book, not a theoretical machine'. A charitable reading of this defense might well be enough to excuse the author the need to clarify so extensively what he did not intend to say. Yet there is enough truth in the allegation to wish that Said had lived long enough to do justice to his topic by authoring a work on how Muslims (how to avoid a generalization?) have conceived of the West in partial, schematized, and therefore distorted ways that preclude human engagement. Perhaps that was not his vocation. It would have made his body of work less partial and therefore truer.

To comment upon Said's Orientalism is necessarily to indulge in the very type of generalization that he savages in its pages. Yet one can do so with readerly sympathy and even solidarity. His influential book is, in part, a `testament of wounds and a record of sufferings'. History certainly validates the need for such a work. He has provided it with more eloquence, passion, and learning than perhaps any other author who has or might have attempted the same task.

It is not difficult to intuit the causes of the dissonance and enmity that arise when Said's view of the world engages with, say, the `civilizationism' of Samuel Huntington or the `crisis of Islam' espoused by Bernard Lewis (against whom Said directs an extended screed). In the former case, the typology must grate, in the latter the reference to a former, classical, and admirable Islam from which the Muslim peoples as we know them today have declined. Though the inevitable caricaturing of such brief description is self-evident, there is enough truth in the abbreviation to justify Said's alarm, if not his disdain.

Probably, the lack of symmetry between the Huntington and Lewis schools on the one hand, and the Said approach on the other, creates a context where Said's fundamentally inaccurate work can and does ring true. His voice is, to quote an Oriental prophet, not unlike that of `one crying in the wilderness'.

It is good to listen to such a voice, though not by shutting out all others. The confrontation of East and West has left victims. Said, before leukemia too early removed him from our company, took up their voice and spoke it without distraction.

This book has probably shaped the intellectual debate about the Middle East among interested Western experts as late Palestinian scholar Edward Said coined a new term for these non-Arab experts dealing with Arab issues: Orientalists.
Said would stick to this theory throughout his consequent writings and as he used it often to undermine the credibility of some famous Western writers on Middle Eastern issues arguing that no experts could surpass the analytical ability of the natives who are clearly in a better positioned to study and analyze their own culture.
The book that was published in 1978 was adopted in the curriculum of some universities in the Middle East while it provoked some Western thinkers who retaliated against Said by discrediting his professorship of Comparative English Literature. According to Said's opponents, if they were unable to understand the oriental culture which they did not belong to, then he could not lecture on English literature since he was an Arab.
The debate over the concept of Orientalism survives Said and is - to this day - under debate.

In this post 9.11 world where ever-increasing importance
is being attached to keywords such as `Islamic
fundamentalism,' `Jihad,' and `Clash of civilizations,'
Edward Said's monumental publication serves as a reminder to
both agitated policymakers and the alarmed public that such
perceptions of the `Islam threat' are, in fact, nothing new.

Said's exposé persistently delineates how the West has created
an erroneous, heavily biased systematic knowledge of the Orient
for political, economical and social purposes. The Orient
- which, in the book, is mainly represented through the Arab
world - has been defined as the antithesis of everything
European (or Western). Thus, the Orient loses its intrinsic,
self-determined value and becomes a counterfeit identity that
only accentuates the genuineness of the Occidental.
Overly exaggerated and false perceptions of the Orient are
promulgated, to be embedded in the works of philologists,
poets, government officials, anthropologists, and so on,
all who compose - be it voluntarily or involuntarily,
consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or
unintentionally - the vast body of `Orientalists'.

Although Said may not have expected the controversy bred and
spread through his book to have such far-reaching implications
as they have now, his claims are pertinent to why and how
current international, US-led foreign policy objectives have
become centered on the two-fold strategy of a) countering
terrorism (i.e. countering the `Islam threat') and
b) proliferating Western ideals of freedom and democracy.
The striking similarities between European point of view
toward the Orient during 17c-early 20c and American attitudes
in the post Cold War world validate the subsisting tradition
of Orientalism.

While the author has devoted much time and attention to
deconstruct the Western creation of the Orient, not much
work has been done on the contrary - the author himself
acknowledges this in the latter parts of the text.
Yet after patiently going through the details, the reader
may ask, and justifiably so, "What, then, is the correct or
recommendable approach to understanding the Orient?"
In other words, after deconstructing the `false' Orient,
how are we to reconstruct the `true' Orient? Should such
reconstruction be the responsibility of penitent Western
scholars, or self-determined Oriental scholars?

This also leads to other important questions that have been
neglected in Said's work (perhaps because it was not within
the mandate of this particular volume), which is - what are
Oriental perceptions of the Occidental, and Oriental
perceptions of the Oriental? If, as the author claims,
perceptions on different cultural realms are defined through
a relationship of power, domination and hegemony, does the
Orientals' conception of the West conform to such an assertion?
How do Orientals define themselves, and how do other
cultures `less powerful' than the Oriental perceive the Orient?
Are all such perceptions necessarily under the dominating
influence of "Orientalism"? To ask and answer such questions
would be the critical next step to enhancing the persuasive
power of Said's argument.

In this post 9.11 world where ever-increasing importance
is being attached to keywords such as `Islamic
fundamentalism,' `Jihad,' and `Clash of civilizations,'
Edward Said's monumental publication serves as a reminder to
both agitated policymakers and the alarmed public that such
perceptions of the `Islam threat' are, in fact, nothing new.

Said's exposý persistently delineates how the West has created
an erroneous, heavily biased systematic knowledge of the Orient
for political, economical and social purposes. The Orient
- which, in the book, is mainly represented through the Arab
world - has been defined as the antithesis of everything
European (or Western). Thus, the Orient loses its intrinsic,
self-determined value and becomes a counterfeit identity that
only accentuates the genuineness of the Occidental.
Overly exaggerated and false perceptions of the Orient are
promulgated, to be embedded in the works of philologists,
poets, government officials, anthropologists, and so on,
all who compose - be it voluntarily or involuntarily,
consciously or subconsciously, intentionally or
unintentionally - the vast body of `Orientalists'.

Although Said may not have expected the controversy bred and
spread through his book to have such far-reaching implications
as they have now, his claims are pertinent to why and how
current international, US-led foreign policy objectives have
become centered on the two-fold strategy of a) countering
terrorism (i.e. countering the `Islam threat') and
b) proliferating Western ideals of freedom and democracy.
The striking similarities between European point of view
toward the Orient during 17c-early 20c and American attitudes
in the post Cold War world validate the subsisting tradition
of Orientalism.

While the author has devoted much time and attention to
deconstruct the Western creation of the Orient, not much
work has been done on the contrary - the author himself
acknowledges this in the latter parts of the text.
Yet after patiently going through the details, the reader
may ask, and justifiably so, "What, then, is the correct or
recommendable approach to understanding the Orient?"
In other words, after deconstructing the `false' Orient,
how are we to reconstruct the `true' Orient? Should such
reconstruction be the responsibility of penitent Western
scholars, or self-determined Oriental scholars?

This also leads to other important questions that have been
neglected in Said's work (perhaps because it was not within
the mandate of this particular volume), which is - what are
Oriental perceptions of the Occidental, and Oriental
perceptions of the Oriental? If, as the author claims,
perceptions on different cultural realms are defined through
a relationship of power, domination and hegemony, does the
Orientals' conception of the West conform to such an assertion?
How do Orientals define themselves, and how do other
cultures `less powerful' than the Oriental perceive the Orient?
Are all such perceptions necessarily under the dominating
influence of "Orientalism"? To ask and answer such questions
would be the critical next step to enhancing the persuasive
power of Said's argument.

Approximately 25 years ago, when Edward Said first published this book, something of a revolution in academic circles began. Since that time, debate has raged and will probably continue to rage for many years hence about exactly how accurate Said was with this argument.

At its heart, "Orientalism" is an argument against essentialising the world. Said contends that the West (Europe and, later on, the United States) defined itself with reference to what it was not, rather than with reference to what it was. What wasn't it? Well, according to Said, it most decidedly was not the East (either Middle East or Far East). As a result, scholarship on non-Western countries and cultures has been coloured ever since by an attitude that the subject is degenerate or in need of benevolent assistance.

In order to demonstrate this, Said - who was a literature critic, not a historian, which explains his methods - takes the reader on a journey from Greek tragedies right through to relatively modern scholarship on the Middle East. This edition, in fact, features an extra essay in which he discusses some of the coverage of the 2003 Iraq war.
Many of the usual suspects of Middle East scholarship turn up here. Arthur Balfour and Lord Cromer are castigated for their attitudes toward Egypt and Palestine, while figures such as Lawrence of Arabia make appearances as well. Academic luminaries such as HAR Gibb and Bernard Lewis are also roundly criticised for their efforts. As befits Said's original career, various great authors such as Flaubert and Nerval also contribute to his argument.

Be warned, this is an exceptionally dense argument to comprehend. Said approaches his topic through a Foucaultian lens and with a heavy dose of philosophy, so the reader will not have facts and conclusions served up on a platter. Similarly, Said assumes that the reader knows who most of these authors are already, so if you aren't aware of someone's significance you may well find yourself lost every now and then.
Nonetheless, there is an overwhelming sense at the end of the book not only of accomplishment but also of having read something important. Bits and pieces of the argument will fall into place over time, rather than straight away.

Is this a perfect argument? Probably not, and Said responds in an afterword to some of his critics. A common criticism is that not enough heed was paid to some scholarly traditions, particularly the German, which did not engage in as much essentialism as the British-American and French perhaps did.
Similarly, it needs to be remembered that this work is a polemic. There were other scholars in various fields arriving at similar - if more nuanced - conclusions to Said's at the time this book was first published, however "Orientalism" does not have time for nuances and subtleties (in some cases, it doesn't have time for totally accurate chronology either, but that's a different issue).

As I have said earlier, the debate about the accuracy of Said's approach to history continues and may never fully be resolved. One need only read some of Bernard Lewis' work to see an emphatic rejection of the claims Said makes against him (Lewis and Said were engaged in a long war of words in the "New York Review Of Books") as well as quite a different view of Middle Eastern history.
That being said, this book is highly recommended to those who want to see what this debate is all about. Regardless of whether the reader agrees with it, anyone with an interest in the Middle East should have read this book at least once. It will either form an important plank in one's understanding of that region and history in general or be an example of "what those other people think". Either way, a must-read.

Said is not who he claimed to be. Those interested can read the truth about Said in "Hoodwinked" by Jack Cashill. Said was neither a Palistinian nor a refugee. The home he claimed he grew up in Jerusalem with his parents were exposed to be a home owned by relatives, but rented out to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and by chance Martin Buber after he fled Nazi Germany. Never the home of Said.

Said claimed he went to school at St. Georges School in Jerusalem, but a BBC documentary showed they had no records of him ever attending. The New York TImes gave the research by Justus Weiner coverage in an article titled "Israeli Says Palistinian Thinker Has Falsified His Early Life". Said attemted to answer the charges, but would up digging himself into bigger holes. Said answered the times by saying he never claimed to be a refugee and had a very priviledged life in Cairo growing up. But in his interview with Harper's in 1992 he claimed "...my entire family became refugees in Egypt" after he had lived in Jerusalem for 12 years. A year earlier in an interview with the NYT they reported after an interview "Mr. Said was born in Jerusalem and spent the first twelve years of his life there." Said was born in Jerusalem only because his mother had a tragic experience with Egyptian healthcare after her firstborn son died during childbirth. After Edward Said was born he immediately returned to Cairo where his father had been living for the past decade. Apparently the scandal died with his own death. Like Ward Churchill, Said fabricated his own background to give himself more clout. His identity as a Palistinian and refugee was key in his writings. In his Afterword in his 1994 edition he wrote, "Orientalism is written out of an extremely concrete history of personal loss and national disintegration,". Not so.

It's an excellent book to read indeed. A new perspective different from those you hear every day in failed media we have nowadays..

This book, like Culture and Imperialism, is essentially about Western prejudice against Islam. Said condemns intellectuals in the West who in his eyes are "agents of exploitation". Yet Said himself is an agent of racism: Arab Racism.

A Pan Arabist, he always supported Arab unity and "Islam" at the expense of non-Arab and non-Moslem peoples. Said directs and manipulates the Western taste for self criticim, and all that does is deflect the world's attention from Arab and Moslem attrocities committed against Christians, Kurds, Jews, Israelis, Coptic Christians, non-Arab Sudanese, etc.

Thus, reading Said, you would never realize that Sadam Hussein's poisoning of the Kurds has never been condemned by one Arab intellectual or leader. This is because a racist prevalent attitude in the Arab mind is that the entire Middle East should be Arab. This also explains the attitude towards Israel, a country that is predominantly non-Moslem and speaks a Middle Eastern language other than Arabic.

The pity is that Said himself is a Christian, yet he never spoke on behalf of Coptic Christians in Egypt, or the right of Christians to practice their faith in Saudi Arabia and probably other places in the Arab World. He is facilitating the overall aim of PanArab Nationalists by distracting the West from what is happening in the Arab world.

For a better understanding of relations between the West and Islam, I recommend books by Bernard Lewis, such as "The Moslem Discovery of Europe" and the "Jews of Islam". I also recommend books by the Egyptian scholar and Jewish refugee Yael Bat Yeor, such as "The Dhimmi".

Orientalism must rank as among those books whose influence is so great that the reader is strongly tempted to know what to think about them before reading them. This generally means that other people have read it and found much to comment on. As Edward Said's best-known work, Orientalism has established him as the leader in a field. The question is, which field exactly would that be? I ask, because even taking away the more obvious bombastic criticisms, there still remain grave problems with this book. In the afterword, from 1994, Said attempts to deal with some criticisms and, honorably enough, debunk some of the accolades that have gone out in his favor. But either no one has addressed the biggest problems (unlikely) or Said chose to ignore them. Either way, Orientalism does not ultimately pass the test of honest scholarship.

The basic thesis is clear enough. Said contends that the entire field of Orientalism is corrupted in its very essence. All scholars of the Orient (which Said treats synonymously with Muslim countries, and only in passing to India or the far East), whether working in historical, literary, or whatever field, have utterly failed to produce useful information about the Orient. This is apparently a conviction Said held without reservation. His claim is that all scholarship was biased by imperialism, written for a Western readership (as no Oriental person was capable of understanding it), and frequently was done in such a way because of malevolent motivations. It is a common refrain in the book that every Orientalist looks at the Orient as nothing more than a source for Western needs. To Said, it's all just a matter of imposing onto an artificially constructed idea of the Orient whatever whims strike the fancy of whichever scholar is at issue.

It's difficult to try to expose every fallacy Said makes. The most commonly repeated refrain is no Western scholar actually cares about the people of the Orient, or even acknowledges their existence. Every line a Western writer issues that refers to himself or any aspect of Western readership is a sign of Western arrogance and contempt. A typical example is on page 193:

"En route to Suez across the desert, alone, he glories in his self-sufficiency and power: "I was here in this African desert, and I myself, and no other, had charge of my life." It is for the comparatively useless purpose of letting Kinglake take hold of himself that the Orient serves him."

Notice how Said dismisses not as irrelevant but as simply unthinkable the very idea that Kinglake, the scholar in question, could have an intrinsic interest in or respect for the Orient. The musings of a British scholar, possibly in the desert for the first time, cannot even for one moment turn reflexively towards himself. To Said, this is proof positive that Kinglake has no interest in the Orient for its own sake. It must, because Kinglake is a Westerner, all revolve around Kinglake. This is exactly the sort of offhand comment Said makes over and over. He never defends these claims specifically, and usually the preceding line (or Saidian paraphrase of a quote) is just as innocuous as the one I cite above. He hammers home this theme repeatedly, as if to establish proof by repeating it often enough (something he explicitly accuses the Orientalists of doing). On a similar, if less weighty note, Said repeats the word `Orient' and its variations more than any similar word I've ever seen in any book, as if to make it into a dirty word by sheer repetition. On some pages, you can make constellations by lining up all the `O''s.

Despite Said's claims, I'm not sure who the audience is supposed to be. For the completely general reader, there are some ideas that can be followed without difficulty, particularly the ones I mentioned above. Honest ideas are harder to come by. But only a specialist could follow everything, because Said does not actually provide many examples of what's bothering him. In many of the quotes he does use as proof of Western disdain for Orientals, I'm hard pressed to see what's actually wrong with them. This becomes especially true in the last chapters, when we are dealing with somewhat current events. Here Said adopts a defensive political tone. It is Western racism, for example, to write about Islam in a way that makes it sound threatening. If Muslims scare you, even when they're armed, enraged and burning American flags, it is a sign of your racism. Similarly, he cites the caricatures of Arab sheiks standing by gas pumps that started showing up in political cartoons circa 1973 as signs of Orientalist racism. Does Said really have no other ideas for why Arab sheiks near gas pumps would show up starting in 1973? Is he joking?

Sadly, he is not. But he may as well be. We get, between these covers, page after page of unfounded claims. It is enough that so-and-so is a bad scholar because Said says so. (And when he does give quotes, he often leaves them untranslated, like page 91, where a French quote fills 28 lines). And he claims that Orientalists are the very last target audience he has?

The irony and shame is that underneath it all, there is truth to Said's claims. Probably much scholarship in various fields in the centuries he mentions leaves much to be desired. How much Eighteenth Century history writing would hold up today? As Keith Windschuttle points out in Killing of History, sometimes these crackpot postmodernists do us a favor by pointing out genuine areas of new scholarship. And honestly, though one would never know from reading Said, much Orientalist scholarship was deeply flawed (See Warraq, Why I am not a Muslim) and said more about the author than the subject. It is a testament to Said's cast-the-first-stone genius that he could take a halfway reasonable claim and botch it to such an incredible degree.

Relations between people of different cultures is a vital part of today's world, not only for culture's sake, but in terms of diplomacy, business, travel, military action, and even just general knowledge. Unlike in previous eras, we are extremely likely to find ourselves living and working with those "others" who used to inhabit unknown spaces "out there". So, intercultural relations can impact on our daily life in new ways that our grandparents never dreamed of. The quality and success of those relationships are going to depend on what we know as individuals about those "others" or on what we know as a society. That is why the process by which we get that knowledge and the actual contents of that knowledge are so important. ORIENTALISM is the work that over the last third of a century has most influenced the way people think and write about that process.

Edward Said concentrated on what is commonly known as "the Middle East", but would be better known as the largely-Muslim countries east of Europe and west of India, or maybe western Asia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this part of the world was often called "the Orient". (Though people applied that term to the rest of Asia too.} The method in which he looks at this so-called Orient can be extended to any other. He examines the process by which Euro-Americans sought information about the Orient. They gleaned it from the writings of diplomats, soldiers, administrators, travellers, and businessmen who had stayed for varying lengths of time in the Orient. They got it from the paintings of artists who wished to sell paintings of exotic scenes or from poets and novelists who wished to write of exotic locales. In almost all cases, the presenters of knowledge treated the Orient as homogenous, simple, dangerous, crude, full of exoticism or fanaticism and above all, unchanging. People there were not separate individuals like "us"; they were the undifferentiated "others" with whom we could make contrasts favorable to ourselves. Some Westerners might dream of escape to the exotic world of the Orient, where society would be the reverse of their own. Some presenters of the Orient knew a lot about what they wrote or painted, others had an extremely superficial knowledge. In all cases, Said writes, the information collected and presented was used by governments in the West to control the Orient. Information was power. The people in the Orient had, and needed, no independent existence. They were only shadows brought to life by the Light of Knowledge emanating from the West. They might be guided to proper ways by Western powers, Westerners with power. Orientalism underlay colonialism.

Said examines the vast body of written work---that "Orientalism"---very extensively. He notes that it has had its own paradigms of research, its own learned societies, its own establishment, not to mention university departments labelled "Oriental Studies" in many countries. Through such bodies, the Orient has been labelled, packaged and presented to the world for two hundred years. We can see this process alive and well today. All you have to do is watch Hollywood movies, turn on your TV for the news, or read travel/geographic magazines. All you have to do is listen to current American pronouncements about the same area, regard their lack of trust in its people, their lack of respect. Think about the labels that are put on Palestinians or Shia Muslims. It is not a question of whether you support this particular cause or that. It is a question of how you get your information. Think about it. The world may depend on a radical change in Western thinking, equal to a stop to suicide bombings, teaching of hatred and terrorist plots. When is a man a terrorist and when is he a freedom fighter ? When an international news magazine tells us so ? An information establishment shapes the presentation of that old "Orient" and many other parts of the world. Said took the first mighty step in forcing the West to see its own constructions. For that, and for a detailed, well-argued book, five stars are obligatory.

"Orientalism" is without doubt Edward Said's most important work. The concept of Orientalism has become the underlying principle for what we today call post-colonial theory. we should be very careful to distinguish between Said's journalist work and his scholarship. "Orietalism" is a strictly scholarly work; i therfore find it strange that some reviewers chastice Said for his political opnions in reviews about this book.
The practice of Orientalism is of course political in its nature, and this is exactly Said's point: our image of the other is constituted by so many disciplines - educational, political, social, literary, economic, etc... our final perception is closer to what we have learned or have been told about the other than what we actually see.
The most brlliant part of "Orientalism" is the introduction, in which said explains his strategies for approaching Western texts about the orient. His strategies, which draw on Althusser's ideological apparatuses and Gramsci's notions of hegemony and Foucault's conceptualizations of power, make up the conceptual edifice that we know as post-colonialism. post-colonialism is a reading strategy through which we attempt to unveil the elements that has been attached to our image of the other. In fact, Said's main question is: why do we see the other as we do?
However, the downside of his endeavor (to which Said himself has admitted) is that the practice of orientalism as Said sees it in "Orientalism" is practiced solely by the west. Said does not examine whether the Orient's image of itself is compatible to that of the orientalists; also, Said does not refer to the practice of occidentalism as a counter-movement. These are important issues that are only partly examined in his later works.
in general, i think this is an extremely important book that introduces extremely important ideas that all academics and also non-academics should be acquainted with. Said's work has been considered valuable to several academic fields, literature, critical theory, comparative literature, cultural studies, etc... Said's academic quest began here, and we should be very sorry that is has ended.

Orientalism fit the times in which Said wrote it, and 25 years later the book manages to do so today. That Orientalism fits and explains our present day does not make the book great - it makes our present day dire. By examining the words of Massignon alone one can gather that our present day is no more empathetic (note: there is a huge difference between empathy and sympathy! empthay only requires being able to see from someone else's perspective, to stand for a minute in their shoes) towards the Arabs and Islam than was the 20th century. For example, Massignon's warlike-Islam image (pg. 268) overlaps contemporary American thought with ease. And his transfixion with ancient Islam matches up quite well with American punditry and the plethora of Koran, Crusade, Saracen and Moor allusions popping up in today's media. The desire to frame contemporary Arab conflict as a conflict rooted in religion and medieval history - not contemporary history and politics - is simply a continuation of the trend to antiquate the Arabs, and reduce them to their historical roots.

In this way modern America is not relying on empathy to help analyze current events, nor is America engaging in any introspective process that would root out embedded bias. Instead they further the three hundred year old trend of casting the Arabs into the primitive, infantile (with relation to modernity), and traditional category, while placing the West into the category of modernity and maturity. This method of analysis has not been productive to the West in the past, and it will not be so in the future, with the latest Iraq war being undisputable proof.

Said's presents proof of all this in a way that would make any historian proud. There are mountains of original material in here that Said sources, and these sources would make life difficult for anyone trying to criticize Said's claims. He simply backs them up too well.

Whenever I listen to the 'mental slavery' line in Bob Marley's Redemption song, the cultural aspect of imperialism as exposed in 'Orientalism' is what first comes to mind.

Fanon's 'Wretched of the Earth' was the ultimate testament of Third World armed liberation, but 'Orientalism' was Palestinian American Prof., Edward Said's first of many testaments of intellectual decolonization.
Said, gives an insight of imperialism as portrayed in 18th and 19th century literature from England, France, and other European powers that had started to expand their domains through countries in the Islamic world, such as Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, which signaled the start of a period where the studies about the Orient gained center stage in literary and history realms. This expansion compelled a plethora of self-declared cultural experts, or 'orientalists,' to study the exotic lands that their empires were conquering. The orientalists, Said argues, would deliberately or unintentionally rationalize these conquests of foreign lands through their literary work by perpetuating the myth that the natives needed to be liberated and civilized by the well-intentioned European, who in times were portrayed as making this benevolent sacrifice for the good of the natives, even if it was by force.

One thing is certain of any empire or great power in history: their massacres, genocides, ethnic cleansings, resource exploitation and war of conquests have all been done under a banner of benevolence, if not in the name of God. This is the conclusion Said arrives at attempts in his 400-page masterpiece, in which he goes into lenght to explain the cultural fraud that was, and still is, often cited by World powers to justify their most loathed policies in Third World countries.

This is definitely a masterpiece!The late Edward Said has done an excellent job in this monumental study on Orientalism.I have no intention here to add cudos to this work,because others , far more qualified ,have already done so.What I want is to point out a few mistakes in the French passages, that were not picked up by other reviewers.These will only be of interest to readers who are well versed in French,and to the Editors ,for the next edition.I am referring to the Vintage Books paperback 1994 edition.
Page 29 Le g?nie inquiet et ambitieux des(not de) Europ?ens...impatients(plural) etc...
Page 81: The correct title of Volney's book is"Consid?rations sur la guerre des Turcs et de la Russie".The word "actuel" is not only redundant,but it is also wrong because "guerre" is feminine.
Page 87 : Contraste frappant(without e ).
Page 90 : The fourth verse is definitely wrong,since the whole poem is in "alexandrin".
Eighth verse: add s to "lointain"(climats lointains)
Page 91,3d para.: "mouvent" should be "meuvent".
Page 113 : les bourgeois "conqu?rants"(add accent on the e).
Page 126 ,3d para.: tableau "g?n?ral"(without e ).
Page 136,line 9 : : "d'?tre redevenu" (without e) .
Page 151,line 8 ; "Musulmans"(one s ).
Page 183,3d para,line 12 :.."ses" matins should be "ces".
Page 264,4th para,line 12: "l'esprit humain" not "humaine".
Page 333,334 : "Description" does not require an accent on the e.
I am sure the late Prof. Said knew French rather well,but not enough to notice these small mistakes when proof-reading the manuscript{Incidentally,I know from experience that when someone's first foreign language is English,it is nearly impossible for him to master French,which has a far more complicated grammar).Obviously,the book's Editors did not fare better.I hope this review will be of some use to them!

In spite of how interesting all references and quotes of Orientalists could be, discovering that it takes more than 300 pages to Edward Said to define Orientalism as a system of ideological fictions is a bit disappointing, after he repeated the same concept hundreds of times with different words. Well, that statement is true for almost all sciences, both social and technical, and surely for their development during XIX century. Once I have been warned by the author that Orientalism has been built above prejudices, and I have been given some significant examples of that, I would prefer not to go through a myriad of further instances to support the initial thesis. Besides, Orientalism's functional facet to Colonialism are widely mentioned, but poorly deepened. That would have required an interdisciplinary approach - cultural, political, historical, ethnological and, why not, scientific - whilst this book is mainly an academic report about textual analysis. Another interesting side, i.e. why Oriental studies are carried on mainly by Western people?, is explained in a few final pages, and in my opinion it would have deserved much more space. So, when Said admits in his 1994 Afterword (probably the worthiest chapter in the whole book) that he has no interest, or capacity, in showing true Orient or Islam, I think he achieves an excessive restriction of the subject "Middle East" (because in this essay "Orient" means that), limiting its suitability to a general audience (which I belong to). There are of course many appreciable hints, but the general style, with its obsessive repetitions, reminds me too much of the political prose common in the 70's, even if Said makes a visible effort to maintain a scholar objectivity. In summary, I did not dislike the book, but I probably lack the specific knowledge necessary to fully appreciate it.