Minor Detail is a 2017 novel by the Palestinian author Adania Shibli. It was translated into English by Elisabeth Jaquette in 2023 and nominated for a National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2020, longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021, and won the LiBeraturpreis [de] in 2023.  

Minor Detail
By Adania Shibl (Palestinian) 2017
Translated into English by Elisabeth Jaquette in 2021
Read by Sirii Scott, 3h 57m
Rating:  9.5 / contemporary fiction

There are two parts to this short but highly rated novel.  Part I concerns the historical event of Israeli soldiers in the Negev desert raping and murdering  a young Palestinian (Bedouin) woman. This was during the 1st Arab-Israeli War of Independence in 1948-’49. It’s referred to as the “Nakba” or “catastrophe” in Arabic.  

Part II occurs 50 years later when Israel is still occupying, colonizing by settlement and periodically fighting the Palestinians, all in violation of International Law.  Now, in the present day, another young Palestinian woman has come across the news of the first woman and is doing her own on-site research in the Negev, at least in part for her own satisfaction – she’s a journalist.  

There are no names assigned in the book In this case I’m not sure if that depersonalizes the characters, as is usually the case, or depersonalizes them. The woman of today’s world is very sympathetic and personalized for me, but not so much the woman of the past, perhaps it distances her but also there is nowhere near as much information about her.

 What gets named are places and things. The place names on a very old map tell her where she would be in the Palestine of 1948, but those on the newer, current, map are all just in a big yellow area indicating “occupied territory.”

 This is a highly literary novel with quite a lot of symbolism. The writing is minimal yet quite sensual and lush in its own way and places. The structure shows once again that “the past… isn’t even past,” (Thank you, Mr Faulkner) in that the “Nakba.” the catastrophe, has not ended. As Egina Manachova wrote in the Chicago Review, “In Minor Detail’s world of shifting borders, the past cannot be simply denied; it bleeds into the present at every turn.”

I’m not going to describe the plot of this incredible book further because spoilers would likely interfere with the sense of “A-ha!” when the readers puts things together for themselves. This is NOT a book to “enjoy,” though. – it’s pretty grim.) 

One overarching theme is that of “borders” and how borders don’t stay put. These are physical, legal, and mental borders, even life and death borders get blurred and, ultimately, the past seems to, yes, “bleed’ right into the present.

https://mondoweiss.net/2019/09/denial-israeli-kibbutz/
https://www.chicagoreview.org/adania-shibli-minor-detail/