A review by katie_greenwinginmymouth
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

challenging emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

CW rape, violence. This short novel is an illuminating illustration of the realities of Palestinian life and I found reading it deeply impactful. The novel is split almost exactly in half with the first half set in 1949 and the second in contemporary Palestine, where an unnamed woman goes on a journey to try and uncover more details about the fate of the woman who is raped and murdered by Israeli soldiers in the first half of the book. I found the book unbearably tense and difficult to read, especially the second half where the central character is clearly deeply affected by the trauma of living under occupation. The anxiety that she described taking the journey through numerous checkpoints, with her work colleague’s borrowed ID card, terrified that she would get found out or stopped was all too palpable. The beauty of the writing is in the numerous little parallels that Shibli draws between the two halves of the book, images of spiders, pulled up tufts of grass, or camels in a watering hole draw connections across the two timelines and link the two women’s stories together. The ending utterly devastated me and left me in shock. A really important read.