Minor Detail
Adania Shibli, Elisabeth Jaquette (translation)“A blistering allegory about state violence & the conscription of women’s bodies. In its minor details, Shibli’s novel offers a piercing account of everyday life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. The translation by Elisabeth Jaquette is superb. Minor Detail is a credo for revolution, a major book: tense, propulsive & timely.” — Emily Stewart, The Saturday Paper
An extraordinary work of art, Minor Detail is continuously surprising & absorbing: a very rare blend of moral intelligence, political passion, & formal virtuosity. — Pankaj Mishra
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Longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
A searing, beautiful novel meditating on war, violence, memory, & the sufferings of the Palestinian people
Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba—the catastrophe that led to the displacement & exile of some 700,000 people—& the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, & among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager & they rape her, kill her, & bury her in the sand.
Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape & murder, & becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly 25 years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.
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Adania Shibli was born in Palestine in 1974, holds a PhD from the University of East London, & has published 3 novels in Arabic. She splits her time between Berlin & Jerusalem.
Elisabeth Jaquette is a translator from the Arabic.