Minor Detail

One of The Atlantic's top 15 reads of 2020, this is a short yet haunting account about the legacy of history and the enduring quest for identity and meaning in Israel/Palestine. Part one features a third-person narrative of a brutal army rape in 1949; part two, a first-person account of an amateur archivist trying to learn more about the circumstances of this event — which coincidentally occurred 25 years exactly prior to her birth (one of the “minor details” that assume symbolic poignancy/potency in the novel). Even if history does not quite repeat itself, it still rhymes. As the novel forcefully and abruptly demonstrates, the same (or very similar) assumptions and prejudices continue to prevail over generations. Put another way, anyone living in this part of the Middle East cannot easily outrun their past. Shibli's text appears even more forceful owing to the namelessness of both major protagonists. In the absence of this context, readers focus more on the minor details — which as the novel reveals, have clear consequences. The sort of work one almost wants to reread (even if it was never entirely pleasurable) on finishing. 7/10.

By Adania Shibli