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4.29 AVERAGE
4.29 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Harrowing and haunting. Shibli's prose is as poignant as ever. It's so powerful that in this slim little novella she manages to rip your guts out with every passing sentence. The stream-of-conscious narrative that ties two disparate historical moments and character voices together is as surprising as it is gut wrenching. Such a powerful work of fiction by one of the best Palestinian voices around.
informative
sad
tense
challenging
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Minor detail by Palestinian author Adania Shibili
Initially published in 2017, this work is divided into two parts. Part one recounts a real Israeli war-crime that took place in historic Palestine, one year after the Nakba (1949). Where a Palestinian family was martyred and the surviving young girl was tortured, r***** and then also martyred.
Part two narrates the fictionalised story of Palestinian woman , 25 years later, who reads about this heinous act in the newspaper and is transfixed by the minor detail, that it occurred on her birthday. We follow the protagonist as she navigates occupied Palestine in search of the site where these horrors occurred.
Sparing no detail, the author ensures by way of this text that we bear witness to the atrocities of the violent settler-colonial project of Israeli occupation in Palestine.
“I keep listening, my ears trained to the sound of repeated bombings, and I feel a strange closeness with Gaza, as well as a desire to hear the shelling from nearby, and to touch motes of dust from the buildings being bombed. The absence of dust brings an awareness of how profoundly far I am from anything familiar, and how impossible it will be to return.”- Adania Shibli
We can clearly see the necessity of this text. We constantly clamber and search for answers, for a why, just like the protagonist.
The differences among the wretched of the earth are minor. We've all heard the saying, "this could be us." But Shibili calls for us to remember, this IS happening to us.
It is a haunting story that is being told each and every day by real people in present-day occupied Palestine. The horrors persist, but so will we.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Free Palestine.
#readingisresistance
Initially published in 2017, this work is divided into two parts. Part one recounts a real Israeli war-crime that took place in historic Palestine, one year after the Nakba (1949). Where a Palestinian family was martyred and the surviving young girl was tortured, r***** and then also martyred.
Part two narrates the fictionalised story of Palestinian woman , 25 years later, who reads about this heinous act in the newspaper and is transfixed by the minor detail, that it occurred on her birthday. We follow the protagonist as she navigates occupied Palestine in search of the site where these horrors occurred.
Sparing no detail, the author ensures by way of this text that we bear witness to the atrocities of the violent settler-colonial project of Israeli occupation in Palestine.
“I keep listening, my ears trained to the sound of repeated bombings, and I feel a strange closeness with Gaza, as well as a desire to hear the shelling from nearby, and to touch motes of dust from the buildings being bombed. The absence of dust brings an awareness of how profoundly far I am from anything familiar, and how impossible it will be to return.”- Adania Shibli
We can clearly see the necessity of this text. We constantly clamber and search for answers, for a why, just like the protagonist.
The differences among the wretched of the earth are minor. We've all heard the saying, "this could be us." But Shibili calls for us to remember, this IS happening to us.
It is a haunting story that is being told each and every day by real people in present-day occupied Palestine. The horrors persist, but so will we.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Free Palestine.
#readingisresistance
Shibli effectively dramatizes the brutality of occupation without needing one single sentence of direct political criticism of Israel or Israelis. This is great political literature: it takes about two nights to read, and afterwards you know, as you knew before but now with a heightened, specific awareness, that life for Palestinians in the West Bank at minimum (which is where the protagonist/writer is from) is utterly intolerable and unjustifiable.
The ending is especially effective and shows total control of the dual form of the novel.
The ending is especially effective and shows total control of the dual form of the novel.