Edward Said

In 1970, he married Mariam Cortas, a Quaker. They had two children. His daughter Najla, is an actress and playwright.

He died of leukemia on 25 September 2003 after battling the disease for 12 years.

Edward Said was born as one of the two children of businessman Wadir Said and Hilda in Palestine. His father had served in the U.S. Army due to which his family was granted U.S. citizenship. His parents practiced Christianity, but he grew up to be agnostic.

He attended the Anglican St. George’s School in Jerusalem in 1947 after which he went to the Egyptian branch of Victoria College. However, he was expelled from there in 1951 due to his misbehavior in school. He was then sent to study at the Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, where he excelled academically.

He enrolled at the Princeton University and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957 and Master of Arts in 1960.

For his doctorate, he went to Harvard University and received his Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature in 1964.

He accepted a teaching position in the Columbia University and joined the faculty of the English department and the department of Comparative Literature in 1963. He worked at the University lifelong.

His doctoral dissertation was on the criticism of the works of the novelist Joseph Conrad which he expanded into a full length book, ‘Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography’, published in 1966.

He served as Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard College in 1974, and became a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science at Stanford University for the term 1975-76.

He had a deep interest in politics and represented the Palestinian National Council (PNC) as an independent member from 1977 to 1991.

In 1978, he published his seminal work, ‘Orientalism’ in which he discussed how the cultural prejudices and false assumptions of the Western World distort the understanding of the cultural elements of the Orient. The book became very popular, though it also generated much controversy.

The work for which he is best known is the 1978 book ‘Orientalism’. The basic premise of the book was that the Western knowledge about the East is not based upon facts or reality but on certain preconceived ideas and notions.

He is famous for being an outspoken advocate of the rights of Palestinians in the U.S. He took a deep interest in the well being of Palestinians even though he had moved out of there when young, and campaigned for their independence.