RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksAdania Shibli\'s Minor Detail is an intense and penetrating work about the profound impact of living with violence, whether it occurred in the past or contemporaneously ... Though the time period and perspectives change, Shibli’s writing is always extraordinarily descriptive, minutely detailing each movement that either protagonist makes. In a place in which the borders and landscapes are changing all the time, Shibli gives a sense that all that can be counted on is the discrete physical movements of a person’s body ... In this novel...injustice is about only one event, recognized by one person many years after it occurred. But this does not lessen the horror of it, and by writing the horrifying event in the present, Shibli renders the viciousness in stark simplicity. Though a spare novel, Shibli’s work is powerful and this translation by Elisabeth Jaquette is rendered with exquisite clarity and quiet control.
