A review by sjgochenour
Orientalism by Edward W. Said

4.0

Frankly not the best book to absorb in audiobook form -- his arguments are detailed and intricate, and it's a little hard to remember the relevant details from one chapter to the next. As an American whose political consciousness developed post 9/11, it's sometimes damn uncomfortable to read/listen to -- I recognized a lot of the ways I've learned to think about Islam and Arab people in this book. I would say it's fairly accessible to the non-specialized reader, but I had to stop quite often and Wikipedia unfamiliar names, places, and books. It took me about a month to get through because the text was SO dense and I had to stop and process frequently.

I'm not sure if this is better in the print version, but Said quite often does not translate his quotes. For French books, I didn't have too much of an issue (and most of the untranslated quotes are French), but I was totally lost in the German.

I frankly enjoyed the 1992 afterword, in which Said delivers a fairly blistering criticism of Bernard Lewis.