"Besides, sometimes it's inevitable for the past to be forgotten, especially if the present is no less horrific."
Minor Detail is a small book broke "Besides, sometimes it's inevitable for the past to be forgotten, especially if the present is no less horrific."
Minor Detail is a small book broken up in two parts. In part I, we see the (true) story of a young Bedouin girl in 1950s Palestine being taken and raped, then murdered by Israeli soldiers. In part II, we follow a Palestinian journalist from Ramallah as she tries to learn more about this woman’s story.
Part I The first part of this book is written in a detached third person voice. It seems like it from the journal entries of the Israeli soldier who found and abused the Bedouin girl. The horrific story of this girl isn't even on this guy's priority list and the disconnected tone makes it all the more haunting as you see how this terrible act is nothing but a minor detail in the lives of these soldiers. I found this first part a little disjointed and very hard to get through, but that was the point. This part is sickening and it’s even more sickening that it was real.
Part II The second part of the book is written in the more personal first person, as we follow a young journalist who grows obsessed with this Bedouin girl's story solely because it happened 25 years before the day she was born. This story hits just as hard as we follow her in present day Palestine and observe all of the obstacles and dangers she faces when she is just trying to get a bit more information on something. We follow our main character as she goes from Ramallah to Tel Aviv and the many struggles she faces before she herself becomes a minor detail.
This book does exactly what it sets out to do perfectly. It is an exemplary example of how reading and writing is resistance. This book can also be read in about a day and I would implore everyone to give it a go. It's a hard read, but it is so important. Despite it's size, this is a book that will stick with me for a long time.
I would highly recommend to anyone based on the contents alone, but the fact that the author has been censured and unable to receive her reward at the Frankfurt Book Fair because of what is going on in Palestine makes it an incredibly important read right now....more
Great for: people wanting to learn in depth about the Nakba of 1948-49, where Israel k*lled/displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This provGreat for: people wanting to learn in depth about the Nakba of 1948-49, where Israel k*lled/displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This provides context via before and after the Nakba, but does not go into detail about any other major events.
Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, tells the story of the Palestinian people who have not had a voice in Western media for so long. It’s not an easy read. He tells the story of terrible terrible atrocities - some of which are still happening - done to Palestinians in order for the country of Israel to exist. While I thought I knew a decent amount, this book - referencing Ben-Gurion’s diaries, military correspondences and reports, and first hand accounts - goes into such detail about the Nakba that it makes you truly angry about how well hidden this event has been. The parallels of what happened then and what is happening now are so important and are really shown here.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine primarily focuses on the Nakba of 1948-1949 where many thousands of Palestinians were massacred and hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes, which they have never been able to go back to. In addition to the Nakba, Pappé explains how this was allowed to happen and gives a short overview of a few things that happened from 1949-2006 and their implications. While this isn’t an all-inclusive history, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is trying to learn more about what is going on in Palestine, especially the first Nakba.
This starts my reading of books about Palestine and/or by Palestinian authors. I definitely expected my reading for this month to go a little differently, but I cannot focus on anything else and feel the need to educate myself as much as possible....more
“We had become temporary residents of Greater Israel, living on Israel’s sufferance, subject to the most abusive treatment at the hands of its young “We had become temporary residents of Greater Israel, living on Israel’s sufferance, subject to the most abusive treatment at the hands of its young male and female soldiers, controlling the checkpoints, who decided on a whim whether to keep us waiting or to allow us passage. But worse than than all of this was that nagging feeling that our days in Palestine were numbered and one day we were going to be victims of another mass explosion.”
read if: you are interested in stories where nature is at the forefront and if you want to hear about a Palestinian’s firsthand experience in the West Bank between 1978 and 2006.
This book, spanning decades, is beautiful heartbreaking. Told through walks our narrator goes on through the years, we watch as the land of Palestine gets smaller, the natural world gets more developed, and even a simple walk could be a death sentence for a Palestinian living in Ramallah. Seeing how something as mundane as the direction of walks and ability for Raja to traverse through Palestine is heartbreaking as he is able to go less and less far from Ramallah each walk because of soldiers and checkpoints. ...more
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