Women in Translation: Minor Detail

The Women In Translation reading group provides a free, friendly and gentle environment in which opinions are shared and new appreciations can be discovered. A place for curious minds and relaxed conversation hosted by poet and translator Annie Rutherford.

*We are currently meeting online only*

Our April meeting of Women In Translation will be discussing Adiana Shibli's Minor Detail, translated from Palestinian by Elisabeth Jaquette.

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.