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4.0 

Minor Detail

By Adania Shibli & Elisabeth Jaquette
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli & Elisabeth Jaquette digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

A searing, beautiful novel meditating on war, violence, memory, and the sufferings of the Palestinian people

Finalist for the National Book Award
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize

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 and exile of some 700,000 people—and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and 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 and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five 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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1089 Reviews

4.0
Surprised Face with Open Mouth
Multi-layered charactersDescriptive writing
Loudly Crying Face
Diverse charactersBeautifully writtenEasy to readDark settingDarkHeartbreakingThought-provokingSexual assaultViolence
Anxious Face with sweat““There are some who consider this way of seeing, which is to say, focusing intently on the most minor details, like dust on the desk or fly shit on a painting, as the only way to arrive at the truth and definitive proof of its existence.” Poignant, profound, deeply upsetting novel. Should be required reading”

About Adania Shibli

Adania Shibli (1974, Palestine) has been writing novels, plays, short stories and narrative essays, which were published in various anthologies, art books, and literary and cultural magazines in different languages. Her latest novel Minor Detail was published in the US by New Directions in 2020, in a translation by Elisabeth Jacquette, and has been translated into many languages, most recently into German (published by Berenberg Verlag). Minor Detail was a finalist for the National Book Award and longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.

Elisabeth Jaquette

Elisabeth Jaquette is a translator from the Arabic and Executive Director of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA).

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