Minor Detail
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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This haunting novella is told in two parts: The minutiae of an Israeli soldier’s days leading up to a horrific crime in the wake of the Nakba, and the perspective of a Palestinian woman whose obsession with investigating said crime leads her to meander through settlements and abandoned villages years later. The matter of fact tone and repeated motifs drive home the fact that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is rooted in brutality, and the past and present are inextricably linked.
Product Details
- Paperback
- 105 pages
- ISBN
- 9780811229074
- Publisher
- New Directions Publishing (5/26/20)
- Dimensions
- 5.2 x 0.4 x 8.3 inches
- Tags
Tags
palestine, the arab world, west asia
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