Christopher Hitchens
A Nation Insulted
The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination 1969-1993
By Edward W Said
Chatto & Windus 400pp £18 order from our bookshop
When Francis Fukuyama’s End of History was published a few years ago, it received some well-merited drubbings for its many theoretical shortcomings. It did, however, contain a piece of argument which was overlooked. Drawing on Hegel and Nietzsche, Fukuyama maintained that a prime motive for human struggle and political sacrifice was the need for recognition. Though it was obviously true that people would risk their lives for meat and potatoes, or for rights or territory, it was no less true that they would fight and die just for dignity and respect.
Pervading all the work of Edward Said on the Palestinian question (here assembled between two covers in the form of lectures, essays, reviews and polemics) is this essential element of pride. For him, the low standing of the Palestinian people – whether in exile, under occupation or scattered in diaspora
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
The first holiday camps had an 'ethos of muscular health as a marker of social respectability, and were alcohol-free. How different from our modern Costa Brava – not to mention the innumerable other coasts around the world now changed forever'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/from-mont-blanc-to-magaluf
'The authorities are able to detain individuals in solitary confinement for up to six months at a secret location', which 'increases the risk to the prisoner of torture'.
@lucyjpop looks at two cases of China's brutal crackdown on free expression.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/xu-zhiyong-thupten-lodoe
'"The Last Colony" is, among other things, part of the campaign to shift the British position through political pressure. As with all good propaganda, Sands’s case is based in truth, if not the whole of it.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/empire-strikes-back