Non-Fiction
All countries
Albania
Algeria
Belarus
Bhutan
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Burkina Faso
Cambodia
China
Congo, Democratic Republic
Cuba
Cyprus
Egypt
France
Ghana
India
Iran
Ireland
Jamaica
Japan
Pakistan
Palestine
Russia
Taiwan
Tanzania
Türkiye
Turkmenistan
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Yemen
Zambia
1
Culture and Imperialism
What if some of the world’s most celebrated literary works also reveal the hidden structures of empire?
In Culture and Imperialism, Edward W. Said examines how novels, music, and other cultural works have reflected—and sometimes reinforced—the expansion of European and American power. Building on the ideas developed in Orientalism, he explores how imperial assumptions appear in literature by writers such as Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, and Rudyard Kipling.
Said also highlights the voices and resistance of people living under colonial rule, showing how culture can become a space for both domination and opposition. By connecting artistic expression with historical power, he invites readers to reconsider familiar literary classics and recognise the imperial histories that shaped them.
Palestine
United States
1993
2
Representations of the Intellectual
Should intellectuals challenge those in power, even when doing so threatens their careers, reputations, or personal safety?
Based on his 1993 BBC Reith Lectures, Representations of the Intellectual explores the role of the thinker in public life. Edward W. Said argues that intellectuals have a responsibility to question accepted wisdom, resist political and institutional pressure, and speak honestly about injustice—even when their views are unpopular.
Drawing on figures such as Theodor Adorno and Jonathan Swift, as well as contemporary political events, Said examines the dangers of allowing expertise, ambition, nationalism, or financial interests to silence independent thought. He presents the intellectual as an outsider who must remain willing to challenge authority rather than simply serve it.
Passionate and provocative, this short collection asks what it means to preserve intellectual independence in a world shaped by powerful institutions and competing interests. It remains a compelling reflection on the relationship between knowledge, conscience, and public responsibility.
Palestine
United States
1994
3
Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression
At twenty-two, Nana-Ama Danquah becomes a mother while struggling with a depression she cannot bring herself to name. Expected to embody the strength and resilience demanded of Black women, she hides her suffering behind silence until it threatens to overwhelm her life. Through therapy, friendships with other women facing similar struggles, and a painful confrontation with childhood trauma, Danquah begins to understand the roots of her despair. Both deeply personal and culturally revealing, this groundbreaking memoir challenges the stigma surrounding mental illness and questions why some women are expected to care for everyone else while suffering alone.
Ghana
1998
4
Other Colors: Essays and a Story
What does it mean to be a writer, to belong to a city, or to live between different cultural worlds? In Other Colors, Orhan Pamuk opens a window into his creative life through a collection of essays, interviews, diary entries, literary reflections, and personal recollections written over more than two decades.
Pamuk writes about his childhood in Istanbul, the pleasures and anxieties of everyday life, his relationship with his daughter, and the books and writers who shaped his imagination. He reflects on the art of writing novels, the relationship between Eastern and Western literary traditions, and the political and cultural tensions that have influenced modern Turkey. The collection also includes the short story Looking Out the Window, offering a glimpse of his fiction through a different lens.
Intimate, curious, and often provocative, Other Colors reveals the ideas and experiences behind Pamuk’s celebrated novels. It is both a portrait of a writer at work and a meditation on literature, memory, politics, and the complexities of belonging.
Türkiye
1999
5
Reflections On Exile: And Other Literary And Cultural Essays
What does it mean to live between worlds—to belong to a place through memory while remaining separated from it by distance, politics, or history?
In Reflections on Exile, Edward W. Said brings together essays written over more than three decades, exploring literature, culture, politics, and the experience of displacement. The collection reflects his lifelong engagement with Palestinian identity and his own experience of exile, while examining how writers and artists respond to the societies that shape them.
Said moves between close readings of literary works and broader reflections on imperialism, cultural identity, and intellectual responsibility. He considers figures such as Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, and Naguib Mahfouz, revealing how art can illuminate the tensions between personal experience and historical forces.
At the heart of the collection is the idea that exile is more than physical separation: it can transform how people see home, belonging, and themselves. Both intellectually searching and deeply personal, the book explores the creative possibilities and emotional costs of living between cultures.
Palestine
United States
2000
6
In Search of Fatima
What does it mean to lose your homeland—and spend the rest of your life searching for a place to belong? In this moving memoir, Ghada Karmi recounts her childhood in Jerusalem, her family’s forced displacement during the 1948 Nakba, and their eventual resettlement in England. Growing up between two worlds, she struggles with exile, cultural alienation, and the feeling of being a stranger in a country that is supposed to be home. As she reflects on her childhood and later returns to Palestine, Karmi explores the personal consequences of displacement alongside the political history that shaped her life. Both an intimate family story and a powerful account of Palestinian experience, this memoir examines how the loss of a homeland can shape identity across generations.
Palestine
2002
7
Survival in the Killing Fields
Survival in the Killing Fields is the harrowing memoir of Haing S. Ngor, a Cambodian doctor who survived the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. Before the regime took power, Ngor worked as a physician and lived with his wife in Phnom Penh. Under the new government, educated professionals were persecuted, cities were emptied, and millions of Cambodians were forced into labour camps, where starvation, disease, torture, and execution became part of everyday life.
Ngor recounts his experiences of forced labour, imprisonment, and the desperate struggle to stay alive while concealing his medical training. He also describes the devastating loss of his wife and the collapse of the life he had once known. After the Khmer Rouge regime fell, he eventually escaped Cambodia and resettled in the United States.
His memoir offers a firsthand account of one of the darkest periods in Cambodian history. It is both a testimony to the suffering inflicted on ordinary people and a reflection on the resilience required to survive war, persecution, and profound personal loss.
Cambodia
2003
8
Istanbul: Memories and the City
Istanbul: Memories and the City is a memoir in which Orhan Pamuk reflects on his childhood, his family, and his lifelong relationship with Istanbul. Blending personal recollections with historical observations and literary reflections, he portrays a city shaped by the fading grandeur of the Ottoman Empire and the uncertainties of modernisation. Pamuk describes the melancholy that permeates Istanbul’s streets, abandoned mansions, waterfronts, and neighbourhoods, connecting this atmosphere to the Turkish concept of hüzün, a collective sense of sorrow and loss. His memories of family life, artistic ambition, and the changing urban landscape reveal how individual identity becomes inseparable from the place in which it develops. The book explores belonging, cultural memory, and the relationship between past and present, offering both an intimate portrait of the author and a meditation on a city searching for its place between East and West.
Türkiye
2003
9
First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of an Indian Childhood
Growing up in 1960s and 1970s Bombay, Thrity Umrigar navigates the contradictions of childhood in a middle-class Parsi family. Attending a Catholic school in a predominantly Hindu city, she becomes increasingly aware of the cultural, religious, and economic divisions that shape the world around her. At home, she experiences both the warmth of her father’s affection and the painful consequences of her mother’s harsh discipline. As she grows older, Umrigar begins questioning the expectations imposed on her and confronting the complicated truths of her family. Through intimate memories of childhood, adolescence, and her eventual departure for America at twenty-one, she reflects on identity, belonging, family secrets, and the inequalities of Indian society. First Darling of the Morning is a deeply personal memoir about growing up between cultures and finding the courage to imagine a life beyond the boundaries of one’s upbringing.
India
2004
10
On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain
What happens when great artists approach the end of their lives—and begin creating works that refuse to offer comfort, harmony, or easy answers?
In On Late Style, Edward W. Said explores the final works of celebrated composers, writers, and artists, including Beethoven, Mozart, Thomas Mann, and Jean Genet. He challenges the assumption that artistic maturity naturally leads to wisdom and reconciliation, arguing instead that some creators produce their most challenging work late in life, embracing contradiction, resistance, and unresolved tensions.
Drawing on music, literature, opera, and film, Said examines how artists confront their own mortality while remaining at odds with the cultural expectations of their time. The result is a compelling reflection on creativity, ageing, and the courage to resist conventional ideas of artistic perfection.
Published posthumously in 2006, this unfinished final work reflects Said’s own lifelong commitment to intellectual independence and the power of art to challenge established assumptions.
Palestine
United States
2006
11
Treasures of the Thunder Dragon
Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan offers an intimate portrait of Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom renowned for its Buddhist traditions, dramatic landscapes, and distinctive cultural heritage. Written by Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, the book combines personal memoir, history, folklore, and travel writing to explore the country beyond its familiar image as a remote mountain paradise.
Drawing on her journeys throughout Bhutan, the author introduces readers to isolated villages, sacred monasteries, ancient fortresses, mountain valleys, and communities whose traditions have endured across generations. She also explores Bhutanese customs, religious beliefs, festivals, architecture, and the relationship between people and the natural world.
Enriched with photographs from the royal family’s personal collection and illustrations by Bhutanese artists, the book celebrates the country’s cultural and environmental treasures. It offers a personal perspective on a nation balancing its traditional values with the changes brought by modernisation, inviting readers to discover Bhutan through the eyes of someone deeply connected to its history and people.
Bhutan
2006
12
The Selected Works of Edward Said, 1966 - 2006
How do literature, culture, and politics shape the way we understand the world? And whose voices are missing from the stories history tells?
The Selected Works of Edward Said brings together key writings from four decades of one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. Edited by Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin, this expanded collection traces Said’s thinking across subjects ranging from colonialism and Palestinian identity to literature, music, media, and the responsibilities of intellectuals.
Featuring selections from Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, and Out of Place, alongside important essays and later writings, the collection offers an overview of Said’s evolving ideas about power, representation, and cultural identity.
Essential for understanding Said’s intellectual legacy, this volume reveals how cultural narratives influence political realities—and why questioning dominant perspectives remains vital.
Palestine
United States
2007