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Join writers Susan Muaddi Darraj and Sahar Mustafah in conversation about Minor Detail, the critically acclaimed novel by Palestinian author Adania Shibli. Her book was a 2020 finalist for the National Book Translation Award and longlisted for The International Booker Prize. Minor Detail is this year's One Book, Many Communities selection by Librarians and Archivists with Palestine. Celebrate by reading the book and joining the discussion.
Book Synopsis
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 exile of some 700,000 people--and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand. Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past. (Bookshop)
Links to purchase Minor Detail:
New Directions Publishing
Bookshop
Moderators
Susan Muaddi Darraj won the American Book Award in 2016 for her novel-in-stories, A Curious Land. Her chapter book series, Farah Rocks, written for 8-12 year olds, is the first to feature a Palestinian American protagonist. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches fiction writing at The Johns Hopkins University.
Sahar Mustafah is the author of The Beauty of Your Face, a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and a short story collection Code of the West, winner of the 2016 Willow Books Fiction Prize. She writes and teaches outside of Chicago.
Event attendees are encouraged to read the book and send their comments/impressions in advance (via saharmustafah@gmail.com) to be discussed as part of the larger conversation.