In this forceful, challenging collection of 37 political essays from the past 25 years, Said, University Professor at Columbia, emphasises that the Palestinians are a people with their own history, society and right to self-determination. He is highly critical of Yasir Arafat's dominance of the PLO, which he calls undemocratic, corrupt and incompetent. He also forthrightly condemns the political right wing that dominates virtually every Arab government, enforcing repression, censorship and "intellectual thought control." A recurrent theme is the West's longstanding prejudice against the Arabs and Islam, manifested in media coverage of the Persian Gulf War, nonrecognition of Arab literature and racist stereotypes of Arabs. Highlights of this collection include a critique of U.S. policy in the Middle East, an analysis of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and a discussion of Palestinian identity with writer Salman Rushdie. Tracing his own direct involvement in the Palestinian national movement, Said deems the recent Israeli-PLO accord a sellout by Arafat, an instrument of Palestinian surrender that suspends most of the Palestinian people's rights and consigns diaspora Palestinians (those living in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) to permanent exile or refugee status.

In this volume Columbia professor Said, for some an enfant terrible while for others the most articulate English-language spokesperson for organized Palestinian efforts to achieve political recognition, has collected 37 of his previously published political essays. There will be no disappointments here for readers familiar with the author's work (e.g., Culture and Imperialism, LJ 3/1/93) or for those reading him for the first time. Said deals with the hotly debated concept of a geopolitical Palestine and its people; the Arab world in general, with which he is not always entirely pleased; and the intriguing relationship of the intellectual to politics and the impact of that relationship on events surrounding the "Palestine Question." Recommended for its style and potency as well as for its alternative viewpoint to the mainstream perspective, Said's book should be acquired by academic and larger public libraries.
--Sanford R. Silverburg