Out Of Place, by Edward W. Said (Granta, £8.99 in UK)

Edward Said is best known as a literary and cultural critic and as a defender of the cause of his people, the Palestinians. He is also, we are informed in a biographical note, a music critic, opera scholar and pianist. This memoir, however, leaves all such preoccupations aside in an acute, affectionate and supremely readable excavation of his personal and family history as an untypically privileged son of an unfortunate and oppressed people. Pulled this way and that by vying intellectual and cultural influences from East and West, Islam and the Graeco-Roman tradition, Said concludes somewhat wistfully that he now prefers "being not quite right". Those who have come across his "anti-imperialist" readings of Austen, Conrad and Camus may well grimly nod their agreement on that one.