Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - Minor Detail

Wow. This was a haunting read that hits particularly hard right now. I thought that the recurring motifs between the two halves of the novella were really clever. I also thought that the banal, almost clinical descriptions of both the horrifying things the Israeli soldiers do to the young girl in the first half and the injustices that the Palestinian woman and her peers have to endure in the second half really clearly revealed the horrors of the occupation. I’m still reeling from the ending - normally I’m not a huge fan of abrupt endings but it really does work well in a novella like this. Read this book.

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caitlin_waddick's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark informative reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Two stories
Minor Detail by Adiana Shibli

A memorable and quick read that is based on documented histories, including Ben-Gurion's own journal entries that documented Jewish-led massacres and mass rapes of non-Jewish Palestinians on behalf of the founding of the State of Israel after the UN Declaration of the two nation-states: Israel and Palestine in 1948.

The first half of the book takes place in 1949, during the Nakba, when Jewish militias are massacring Palestinians so that the new State of Israel can be created as a place for mostly European Jewish immigrants. The main character, who is not accustomed to the Negev desert, could be from anywhere else, but is definitely not indigenous to the land. The story covers a few days of his life that features the kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder of a Beduin girl, whose people they massacre first. It is well-written, if horribly and intentionally mundane and factual.

The second half takes place in modern times and reads as if it were a true story. The main character is an Arab Palestinian woman from Ramallah who is on the autism spectrum. -- Have you ever read a story in which the main character was autistic in some way? It could be new to you. -- She learns of the 1949 mass rape and wants to corroborate it by visiting the location of this particular war crime. This local travel for her, comparably covering just a few days of her life, is complicated because her Palestinian identity restricts her travel and her worth and dignity under Israeli Apartheid. The writing shows her dehumanization through the plot, again mundane and factual.

... We never learn if she is Muslim or Christian or Beduin.

Do view content warnings posted by others. From another post: CW: murder, rape, sexual violence, war, gun violence, death, genocide, colonization, racism, torture, islamophobia, religious bigotry, body horror, misogyny, kidnapping, animal cruelty, child death, police brutality, injury, panic attacks, vomit, pedophili

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