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.

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 expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.

'A complex tale of revolution, displacement, delusional love' Guardian In Damascus, Suleima and Naseem's relationship is torn apart by the outbreak of civil war. With Naseem now seeking refuge in Germany, he sends Suleima the unfinished manuscript of his novel - and what she reads will throw her entire identity into question. Who is the unnamed woman in the book, and just what is Naseem trying to say? In search of answers, Suleima must confront what has happened to her family, to her country, and start to make sense of who she is. Told with riveting immediacy, this is an intimate portrayal of living with fear from an electrifying new voice in international fiction. 'A shocking journey through the realities of life under the Assad regime' TLS