Minor Detail begins in the summer of 1949, when Palestinians were mourning the catastrophe of the Nakba, which had driven 700,000 people from their homes, while Israelis were celebrating their War of Independence. Israeli soldiers kill a group of Bedouins in the Negev Desert and take captive a young Palestinian woman travelling with them. They rape her, then murder her and bury her in the sand. Decades later, in the near present, a young woman in Ramallah sets out to uncover this “minor detail” of history and becomes obsessed with the incident.
A chilling novel about war, violence, and memory, Minor Detail was shortlisted for such prestigious honours as the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award. It masterfully explores the dispossession of Palestinians and the realities of life under occupation.
“Adania Shibli takes a great risk by recounting the pivotal event of her novel—the rape and murder of a young Bedouin woman—through two narrators entirely absorbed in their own worlds: an Israeli psychopath and a Palestinian amateur detective on the autism spectrum. Yet this method of indirection achieves its aim, thanks to the novel’s shocking conclusion.”
—J. M. Coetzee
“Minor Detail is an extraordinary work of art: endlessly surprising and compelling. It is a rare example of moral intelligence, political passion, and formal mastery.”
—Pankaj Mishra