5/8/2023 0 Comments Minor Detail by Adania Shibli![]() ![]() The novel is divided into two sections, with the story of the commanding officer of the platoon first, then the researcher’s. She becomes haunted by a “minor detail”: “The incident took place on a morning that would coincide, exactly a quarter of a century later, with the morning of my birth.” She feels compelled to recover the voice of a girl who is “a nobody and will forever remain a nobody whose voice nobody will hear.” Many decades later, an unnamed Palestinian woman - a researcher - comes across the story of the girl’s murder in a newspaper. They encounter a group of unarmed Bedouin whom they kill, except for a girl they take back to their camp, rape, murder and bury in the desert. In the searing heat of the Negev (or Naqab, the original Palestinian name) Desert in 1949, an Israeli platoon is sent to cleanse the area of Palestinians still present after the 1948 war - the Palestinian exodus is known as the Nakba. It is a poetic, political work, which reveals the disastrous consequences of the Israeli occupation through the textures and movement of language on the palimpsest of history. ![]() ![]() Minor Detail by Palestinian author Adania Shibli is an intense, subtle novel immersed in the landscape of Palestine, shaped by the contours of the land and the conditions of occupation. Translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette ![]()
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