Places of Mind by Timothy Brennan review – a generous and heartfelt biography of Edward Said

An intimate portrait of the public intellectual by a former student underlines Said's mastery of several fields and, 20 years after his death, his contemporary relevance

Long after his death in 2003, Edward W Said remains a partner in many imaginary conversations." The opening line of Tim Brennan's biography of Said is true - it's hard to come up with another thinker who remains so present in his absence. Some 50 or so books have been written about him. His writings are taught in universities across the world. Look on social media and you'll find him constantly referred to, in easy, familiar terms, by the young across the globe. His portrait is on the walls of the old cities of Palestine, in the company of the martyrs. The events of the past years, not least the Arab uprisings and the counter-revolutionary triumphs that followed them, have been for many of us occasions where we turned to his ideas and his example.

Said bestrode not just one world, but several. Just as he was at the same moment a New Yorker and a Palestinian brought up in Egypt, he was also a literary critic, a theorist, a political activist, a musician and more. And if this led to him being not quite right" in any one world, his genius was to transmute this condition into the engine of ideas around which a considerable part of the intellectual and political life of these worlds came to revolve.