Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward Said, in which Said studies the cultural representations that are the basis of Orientalism, the West’s patronising perceptions and fictional depictions of “The East” — the societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Orientalism, the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, was and remains inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect. Wikipedia

Said was a Palestinian professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. He passed away in September 2003.

Regarded as one the foremost intellectuals of our time, Said’s model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle Eastern studies—how academics examine, describe, and define the cultures being studied. As a seminal work, Orientalism has been a subject of scholarly controversy.