A fatal medical diagnosis prompted Edward Said to leave a record of his youth in Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt. "The start of chemotherapy had been a point of no return," he says, "but a memoir would be the opposite - a going back, an effort to rescue from oblivion a time and place that had all but disappeared." But his book Out of Place set off a controversy. His very origins were challenged by Commentary and then picked up by others. Said says the attack "is to smear Palestinian claims to dispossession and the right of return."

Edward Said
Edward Said, internationally renowned Columbia University professor, practically invented the field of post-colonial studies. His great work, "Orientalism" has been translated into many languages and is widely used in colleges and universities. The "New York Times" called him, "one of the most influential literary and cultural critics in the world." As one of the few advocates for Palestinian rights in the US, he was the target of vilification, death threats and vandalism. The "Economist" said he "repudiated terrorism in all its forms and was a passionate, eloquent and persistent advocate for justice for the dispossessed Palestinians." He was a trenchant critic not just of Israeli policies, but also of Arafat, the corrupt coterie around him and the despotic Arab regimes. He felt strongly that intellectuals had a special responsibility to speak out against injustice, challenge power, confront hegemonic thinking and provide alternatives. His memoir "Out of Place" won the New Yorker Book of the Year Award. Edward Said died in New York on September 25, 2003.