On May 26 the novel Minor Detail, by the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli, appeared in Elisabeth Jaquette’s English translation with New Directions Press. Originally published in Arabic in 2017, the novel centers around a brutal crime — the rape and murder of a young Bedouin girl, in the Negev in August, 1949, during the Israeli War of Independence, which is called in Arabic the Nakhba, or disaster. Decades later, a young woman in Ramallah becomes obsessed with the events surrounding the crime.

Marcela reads from the opening of the novel’s second section, narrated by this woman.

Text:
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette. New Directions Press, May 26, 2020.