Paperback
Portuguese language
Published by Publisher.
(As described on goodreads) 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 expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.
Heartbreaking and translated so well too
An excellent novel detailing a war crime by a nascent Israeli army as told by its principal perpetrator, and the subsequent investigation of that crime by an anxious Palestinian woman in the past decade. Two stories woven together by echoing details—a dog, a sound, the smell of fuel—and fear. This one comes with a Coetzee blurb and that makes sense, both in the book's content and in the really interesting voice Shibli gives her character in the second half—an almost Dyeresque travelogue narration, but with huge stakes unfurling in the background.
