An International Booker Prize nominated novelist cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience and asks how literature can create space for the minor details of history.
‘…this austerely beautiful novel focuses on one incident in the Palestine/Israeli conflict and casts light on ethnic conflicts, and ethnic cleansing, everywhere.’
— International Booker Prize Judges, 2021
Spare, haunting, and carefully crafted, the third novel from International Booker Prize longlisted novelist Adania Shibli cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience and demonstrates how literature can create space for the often overlooked details of history.
Told in two parts, Minor Detail takes an unflinching look at life in a present that is forever haunted by the past. Reflecting on dispossession and life under occupation, Shibli challenges the limitations of archival history and asks – how can we document a full and complete history in the face of ongoing displacement and disempowerment.
Adania Shibli was born in Palestine in 1974. Her first two novels appeared in English with Clockroot Books as Touch (tr. Paula Haydar, 2010) and We Are All Equally Far From Love (tr. Paul Starkey, 2012). She was awarded the Young Writer’s Award by the A. M. Qattan Foundation in 2002 and 2004. Minor Detail was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2020, and longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021.