The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to investigate the descriptions of characters and settings in four autobiographies. The main question is: What picture of women and men, of the West and the Orient do these books provide? To answer this question we have formed three sub questions, which are: In what ways are main and minor characters described? In what ways are the key settings, and the Western and Oriental societies described? Which themes are dealt with, and from what points of departure? The theoretical framework is based on a postcolonial theoretical perspective, where the concept of binary opposites and Edward W. Said’s ideas about orientalism are crucial. The method used is a textual analysis. To analyze the material, a number of analysis questions were designed with the main question, and its sub questions, as a basis. The result shows that descriptions of characters and settings have dramaturgic functions of forming a background to the story. Accordingly, the same features may be described in either negative or positive terms, due to what aspect of the story the book currently deals with. The conclusion suggests that colonial stereotypes are evident today in popular literature, such as these autobiographies, in fact, they are even stronger than they used to be. / Uppsatsnivå: D