Adania Shibli

Touch centers on a girl, the youngest of nine sisters in a Palestinian family. In the singular world of this novella, this young woman's everyday experiences resonate until they have become as weighty as any national tragedy. The smallest sensations compel, the events of history only lurk at the edges--the question of Palestine, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. In a language that feels at once natural and alienated, Shibli breaks with the traditions of modern Arabic fiction, creating a work that has been and will continue to be hailed across literatures. Here every ordinary word, ordinary action is a small stone dropped into water: of inevitable consequence. We find ourselves mesmerized one quiet ripple at a time.

A young woman is instructed by her boss to write a letter to an older man. His reply begins an enigmatic but passionate love affair conducted entirely in letters. Until, that is, his letters stop coming. But did the letters ever reach their intended recipient? Only the teenage Afaf, who works at the local post office, would know. Her duty is to open the mail and inform her collaborator father of the contents—until she finds a mysterious set of love letters, for which she selects another destiny. Afaf has lived in shame ever since her mother left her father for another man. And in this novel, her story is followed in turn by another: the story of a woman who leaves her husband for someone else, to whom she declares her love in a letter… The chain of stories that make up this singular novel form a wrenching examination of relationships and their limits—relationships tenuous, oblique, and momentous. In prose at once fierce and subtle, We Are All Equally Far from Love is a haunting portrait of alienation and desire.

Un año después de la guerra de 1948, Los soldados de una unidad militar israelí destacada en el desierto del néguev sobre llevan como pueden el asfixiante calor DE las horas de sol y patrullan al atardecer la frontera sur del nuevo estado. En una de esas rondas encuentran a una joven Palestina entre las dunas. Tras apresarla y encerrarla en su campamento, la violan en grupo, la matan y la encierran en la arena. Muchos años después, en la actualidad, una joven de Kamala descubre por casualidad una escuela menciona a aquel «detalle menor» de la historia Palestina, ocurrido justo veinticinco años antes del día en el que ella nació. Obsesionada con el crimen, se dispone a investigar las circunstancias que lo rodearon. Una novela tan asfixiante como el aire del desierto durante la Calima.

"آب 1949, يخيّم قائدُ كتيبة عسكريّة مع جنوده في بقعة من الصحراء النقب, يُشتبه في أنها ممرٌّ يسلكه المتسلّلون العرب. بعد أكثر من خمسة عقود, تنطلق فتاةٌ موظفةٌ فلسطينيّةٌ في رحلة صوب النقب ساعيةً إلى كشف ملابسات حادثة جرت في ذالك المعسكر, مستعينةً بتفاصيل ثانويّة شتّى.

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.