Title: Minor Detail*
Author: Adania Shibli
Rating: 4.25 stars / 5 stars
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Favorite Quote: “As for the incident mentioned in the article, the fact that the specific detail that piqued my interest was the date on which it occurred was perhaps because there was nothing really unusual about the main details, especially when compared with what happens daily in a place dominated by the roar of occupation and ceaseless killing. And b*mbing that building is just one example. Even r*pe. That doesn’t only happen during war, but also in everyday life. R*pe, or m*rder, or sometimes both; I’ve never been preoccupied with incidents like these before. Even this incident in which, according to the article, several people were killed, only began to haunt me because of a detail about one of the victims. To a certain extent, the only unusual thing about this killing, which came as the final act of a gang r*pe, was that it happened on a morning that would coincide, exactly twenty-five years later, with the morning I was born. That is it.” Shibli, Adania. Minor Detail. New Directions, 2020, pg. 60. (Words censored for purposes of posting online, but are not censored in the book itself.)
Review: Though short, Minor Detail is a powerhouse of a novel - one that grips the reader from the very first page and forces the reader to reckon with the horrors of occupation. In 2024, it seems like a read that is not only important but necessary.
MInor Detail is split into two timelines - the first section follows an unnamed officer in the Israeli military in 1949, which, according to the book’s description is “one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba, the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of some 700,000 people.” In this section, the officer and his confederates hold hostage a nameless woman who they then brutally sexually assault before murdering.
The second section of the book follows the modern-day narrator, still living in occupied Palestine, who stumbles across an article detailing the events of the first section. She becomes tormented by details (or lack thereof) in the article, in large part because the date of the woman’s murder coincides with the date of her birth, albeit years before. This article leads her on a journey through increasingly dangerous (for her) territory to find as much as she can about what happened twenty-five years before her birth.
Having read Minor Detail in English, I recognize that I read it in translation, but being translated did nothing to dim the power of the story told in Minor Detail’s pages. Shibli masterfully weaves a story of brutal power, oppression, and violence, gendered and otherwise. But even in the book's lesser plots, Shibli grips the reader’s attention. For instance, even though the plot of the first part of the novel focuses on the r*pe and m*rder of the Palestinian woman held hostage in an Israeli military camp, but readers are also privy to the graphic, painful infection suffered by the unnamed officer after an insect bite that occurred in the first few pages.
This isn’t just a should read, it is very much a must read.
Books like Minor Detail exemplify the power of art/literature. Not only does it tap into a critical moment in the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but it stirs such passions in its readers that an award seeking to honor Shibli’s work was pulled in light of increasing tensions in the region. This, rightfully, stirred international criticism. See this NYT article for a timeline of the controversy.
About that Quote: I think this quote both captures the point of the novel and also an inescapable, heartbreaking truth that the world is living through in this moment. Violence, graphic, deadly, senseless violence, is “nothing really unusual” in a world where it is occurring every moment.
I encourage everyone to read about the current violence being perpetuated against Palestinians - reading Minor Detail is eye opening, but it’s even more important to know what is happening now.
Have you read Minor Detail? Share your thoughts below!
An (incomplete) list of TWs for Minor Detail: r*pe, m*rder, g*nocide, racism
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