Adania Shibli and Elisabeth Jaquette on Minor Detail
Author Adania Shibli and translator Elisabeth Jaquette speak about the 2021 International Booker Prize-longlisted Minor Detail.
Adania Shibli
Adania Shibli was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021 for her novel Minor Detail.
She was born in Palestine in 1974. Shibli has written novels, plays, short stories and narrative essays. Her first two novels appeared in English as Touch, translated by Paula Haydar, and We Are All Equally Far from Love, translated by Paul Starkey. Shibli was awarded the Young Writer’s Award by the A. M. Qattan Foundation in 2002 and 2004. Her latest novel, Minor Detail, was shortlisted for the National Book Award in 2020, and in 2021 it was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Shibli is also engaged in academic research and teaching at different universities across Europe, as well as at Birzeit University, Palestine (2012-2018).
…this austerely beautiful novel focuses on one incident in the Palestine/Israeli conflict and casts light on ethnic conflicts, and ethnic cleansing, everywhere.
What the judges said
‘The first part of this devastatingly powerful book gives a laconic account of a shocking crime. In the second, decades later, a woman sets out to comprehend that crime. Set in disputed ground, this austerely beautiful novel focuses on one incident in the Palestine/Israeli conflict and casts light on ethnic conflicts, and ethnic cleansing, everywhere.’
2021 International Booker Prize Chair of judges, Lucy Hughes-Hallett
All nominated books
Adania Shibli's novel 'Minor Detail' was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021. It is a haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, which cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession. Translated by Elisabeth Jaquette.
