Daily Times

There is an ever-present power in award-winning Palestinian author Adania Shibli’s work and “Minor Detail” is another novel in which that magic lingers. Told in two equal parts, both the same length but with different main characters who live in different eras, Shibli crafts a story that connects strangers to one another through the occupation that has shaped their lives. The novel begins in 1949, one year after the Nakba in which 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. A military operation is taking place in the Negev desert, south of Gaza along the Egyptian border, to secure the land and expel the Arabs. Expertly translated into English by Elisabeth Jaquette, Shibli’s her story begins with descriptions of layered landscape that stretches from sandy hills to blue skies, both assaulted by a blazing, August sun. Israeli soldiers build a camp in an abandoned area where days of heavy shelling have left only two huts standing. Despite the monotony of the soldiers’ lives, they still have a mission to carry out which is “demarcating the southern border with Egypt and preventing anyone from penetrating it,” and “to comb the southwest part of the Negev and cleanse it of any remaining Arabs.”