Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete’s temperament, he did not experience his political awakening until the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, which transformed his thinking and led him to forge ties with political groups and like-minded scholars. In this intimate intellectual biography, by a close friend and confidant, Nubar Hovsepian offers fascinating insight into the evolution of Said’s political thought. Through analysis of Said’s seminal works and the debates surrounding them, he traces the influence of Foucault on Said, and how Said eventually diverged from this influence to arrive at a more pronounced understanding of agency, resistance, and liberation. Hovsepian charts both Said’s engagement with the Palestinian national movement and his exchanges with a host of intellectuals over Palestine, arguing that Said’s interventions have succeeded in changing the parameters of the discourse in the humanities, and among younger Jews searching for political affiliation.
