Disorienting

"[A} work of malignant charlatanry in which it is hard to distinguish honest mistakes from wilful misrepresentations" [It would make a good novel because] it is exciting, packed with sinister villains and a richly imagined world".

That's Robert Irwin on Edward Said's seminal Orientalism. Irwin's For Lust Of Knowing seeks to "hammer, and hammer again, at the many invalid assumptions, omissions, errors and mistranslations within Orientalism," according to this review. Looks like university academic departments are going to have lots to discuss in the near future.