Minor Detail | 
pick#SpringSkies Day 7: There literally is no #Escape from the tension in the story, palpable to the point of suffocation. I felt the protagonist‘s defiance battling with terror. My full review here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-qhH
pickWoah. Heavy for sure. The casual, cold narrative of the first half - never personal - about the horrific actions of the soldiers, contrasted to the deeply personal and interior first person narrative of the second half. Both women met the same terrible tragic end, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So little has changed in 70 years. This is honest and unsentimental. Very good!!
pickFor a little over 100 pages, this is a very heavy, yet timely book. Told in two sections, the first details the Israeli settlements in the Negev and a horrible crime that happens. The second section is a Palestinian narrator many years later who tries to find more information about the incident. It is a story of the ravages and horrors of war and displacement.
pickBased on true events, this is a fictional account of a woman who was sexually assaulted by isreali soldiers.
Split into two timelines, 1949 and the other more recent, we experience Palastine.
This book is heavy. The heat, the sand, the occupation, you can feel the intensity in each sentence. For such a short book, it's exhausting, but necessary.
Five stars. Do pick this one up folks.
pickYou may have heard of this book because it was set to receive the 2023 LiBeraturpreis Award at the Frankfurt Book Fair but its ceremony was controversially cancelled in the wake of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel. This subtly written yet searing novella powerfully demonstrates the horrors of the Palestinian experience and the violence colonialism inflicts not only marginalized bodies, but on history, geography, and memory.
#HumbleHarvest Day 24: Finally found a copy (two actually) of this #Novella that I have been looking for - all copies sold out in the Emirates. Finally found it today in a book shop here in Bologna - the same bookshop my PhD candidate student recommended that I go to after visiting a day earlier. When I messaged her that I found tagged book, turns out she didn‘t notice it at all while she was here yesterday. Naturally, I got her the other copy. 💕
pickI read this because it was denied an award ceremony that it deserved. It was on the liberate with literature reading challenge too. Highly, highly recommend. 10/10.
Also reading this for Black Booktok‘s Liberate with Literature Challenge. 🇵🇸🍉🇵🇸🍉🇵🇸🍉
🚨FYI libro.fm is offering this audiobook for free through this weekend
pickBeautifully and tragically haunting.
Whose stories matter to tell? Who matters to be remembered? To be missed?
Who is a minor detail?
pickA little over hundred pages, this story about the Israeli occupation of Palestine was written over a decade. This explains why it reads like a perfectly measured yet brilliantly written piece of political fiction with not a single word out of place. Beginning in 1948 and ending a few decades later, we are shown in immaculate language the effect of war and the importance of memory. Highly recommend.
What a great year of reading. Some of my top reads: Minor Detail, Passing, Piranesi, The Undocumented Americans, Summerwater, The Overstory, Fault Lines, Interior Chinatown, Swimming Home, How The One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, Infinate Country, Matrix, and Hell of a Book. Here is to a wonder new year!
pickMany TW for this #Bookerlonglist
Minor detail is a loaded and deviating title for this slim novella. The way the world has turned their backs on the Palestinian people is shown in start, bare and brutal writing and story telling.
The first and second half are laid out to effectively show the contrasting narrators. The difference between the first and second half of the book are jarring. 👇👇
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pickA reluctant re-read for #InternationalBookerPrize2021
The story effectively raises questions about whose stories are being told, whether our focus is in the right place, access to information, and how we understand/navigate borders. The detached style is powerful & uncomfortable - to the point where (again) I found the first half almost unreadable.
The International booker shortlist will be announced on Thursday, & I‘m trying to squeeze in another 1 or 2 from the Longlist. I‘ve been putting off this re-read by Googling terebinth trees. And Sainsbury‘s are due now, so I may just have to put it off again. (It‘s an effective book, but I really don‘t want to read it again!)
But isn‘t the tree lovely?
📷 Terebinth Tree by Eitan_f CC-BY-SA 3.0 https://bit.ly/3drsAHK
pickThe story is divided into two parts: the first takes place in 1949: an unnamed officer responsible for the gang rape and the murder of a Bedouin girl is reflected, mainly in details, in the second part (which takes place in the present), when - also an unnamed woman, investigates what exactly happened. The story itself is shocking, but I think that the strongest point of this book is the narrative style (in the first part third ... 👇
#ReadingAsia21 #Palestine I‘m probably not the most objective reader so take my review in stride. This worked for me in some ways and failed in others. The detached writing was effective but the rambling, repetitive prose fell flat. As someone who shares her daily life with Arabs, Jews and other ethnicities, I‘m always disappointed when an author decides to highlight negative stereotypes & perpetuate the image of brutality & aggression. 👇🏽
pickThis novella of #Palestine is really 2 long short stories that intertwine and reflect one another, exploring the dangers of othering a people so that they are seen as less than. It‘s devastating and makes me think. Don‘t read the publisher‘s description, though, as it gives far too much of the story away.
#ReadingAsia2021
pickCatching up with a couple of reviews I didn‘t get round to writing a few weeks ago.
This is a novel of two halves, quite literally. The first tells the story of an army officer in 1947, clearing an area of Arabs. A young Palestinian girl is gang raped and murdered. The story - and writing - are excruciating. And cold.
So…I didn‘t mean to, but I went to Cannon Beach Book Company and these all jumped into my arms. 😬 I‘m excited, as the bottom row are all NBA longlisted titles from the translated literature list! 🥳 I have one more planned bookstore shop on this trip, and it‘s a doozy (Powell‘s), so we‘ll see how much more damage I do!
