#adania

[bogkeep]

here she is!! the oldest and fluffiest princess of iphimery, second in line for the throne! - early 30s - local autism creature - shy and easily socially exhausted - does not enjoy being a public figure, if you want her to be a useful royal give her some paperwork and a quiet room - likes to do Small Crafts. embroidery, tiny paintings, making jewellery out of shells, things like that - she's paying attention even if it doesn't look like it

[smokefalls]

Besides, sometimes it’s inevitable for the past to be forgotten, especially if the present is no less horrific.

Adania Shibli, Minor Detail (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette)

[garadinervi]

عدنية شبلي (Adania Shibli), Minor Detail, Translated by Elisabeth Jaquette, New Directions, New York, NY, 2020

[loneberry]

notes from my sickbed

(From The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov)

*

Books I’ve finished reading during my COVID convalescence. I read Shatz’s Fanon biography, The Rebel’s Clinic, with a race + psychoanalysis reading group I’ve been hosting for a few years now. I have mixed feelings about the book, but that topic is for another day.

Re: Minor Detail—listen to this wide-ranging interview with Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli. Toward the end there is a thought-provoking conversation about the question of the state. Loved the discussion of the hospitality of language. The bells tolling in the background. The agency of words, the being of silence. 

*

The only thing I like more than reading in bed is reading outside. I’ve just been sitting on my back porch from around 7:30am until an hour before sunset, reading and writing notes, pausing whenever there is a soft breeze to look at the quivering leaves of the maple, or to observe the adorable sparrows that have built a nest in the roof of my porch. (They fly off toward the tree when they sense I am looking at them.) I’ve been feeling quite weak, but I force myself to walk a little around sunset despite the shortness of breath. In the evening I watch films and fall asleep listening to podcasts. 

A couple days ago I walked past the old apartment I used to live in during the pandemic. Is it wrong to say—I felt a kind of relief when everything shut down, that my frenetic schedule of events + travel was instantly erased. I quite enjoy spending time alone, marinating in my thoughts, reading and writing all day, living in a semi-hallucinatory state induced by how intensely I live in these parallel worlds made up of words. (So some part of me finds pleasure in convalescing too.)

On Hancock Street, the bursting rose bushes have been uprooted to make room for the sleek new (hideous) house on the corner. The Mountain laurel and wild roses were blooming at the apartment I lived in during the pandemic. I thought about how well I got to know the tiny radius around that apartment, the almost-religious attention I paid to every inch of new plant growth, how I mapped my emotional state onto whatever was blooming in that moment—forsythia during the initial lockdown, the scent of lilac wafting in through the window as I completed my last weeks of grad school, the roses and mountain laurel blooms during the news of M’s suicide.

I walked on the trail I walked on during the pandemic, by the grape vines covering the fence of the community gardens, the same vines I observed four years ago while talking to M’s publisher on the phone, listening to his voice crack with emotion as he spoke about wishing there was something he could have done, while another part of my brain recoiled at the sight of the pockmarked leaves—a disease was spreading across the vines, possibly triggering my (moderate) trypophobia. He was saying something about a camera he had given her... 

I remember looking at the last orange light catching the tops of the maple trees and thinking, “You’ll never see that light.”

My oura ring metrics are still in the dumps (it’s funny this little smart ring knew I was sick before I did) but I think I am slowly getting over this bout of COVID. The fatigue and brain fog is crushing, but at least I can still smell the irises. 

[belle-keys]

“The borders imposed between things here [in Palestine] are many. One must pay attention to them, and navigate them, which ultimately protects everyone from perilous consequences... Well, no going back now, not after crossing so many borders, military ones, geographical ones, physical ones, psychological ones, mental ones."

- Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

[swanasource]

“Organizers cited the Israel-Hamas war as the reason for stepping back from honoring a novel about the 1949 murder of a Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers.”

Frankfurt Book Fair Cancels Award Ceremony for Palestinian author and essayist Adania Shibli

[doyouwanttoseeabug]

You might have heard of Adania Shibli, the Palestinian author who was meant to receive a prestigious award from the Frankfurt Book Fair but who's award was pulled in the wake of everything happening in Palestine.

Her novel, Minor Detail, is based on a true story - in 1949, Israeli soldiers captured, raped and murdered a young Palestinian woman. It's a brilliant, important book, and its currently free on Amazon, Apple and Kobo.

[beatrizonfilm]

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (review)

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. “there are some who consider this way of seeing, which is to say, focusing intently on the most minor details, like dust on the desk or fly shit on a painting, as the only way to arrive at the truth and definitive proof of its existence.”

WHAT I THINK... I'm going to think about this one for a long time, I'm sure and naturally I ran out of words to describe how much I cried (this is not a recommendation, it's a necessity so you should read it) 5/5 ⭐️

MY GOODREADS <33

[seoafin]

List of some palestinian works that are on my to-read list (both fiction and nonfiction)

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

On Palestine by Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky

Salt Houses by Hala Alyan

The Question of Palestine by Edward Said

In the Presence of Absence by Mahmoud Darwish

The Butterfly's Burden by Mahmoud Darwish

Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh

[tierracottas]

amid the organizers of Frankfurt Book Fair's open and whole support for Israel, they have shamelessly closed out space for Palestinian literary voices in favor of making Israeli voices "especially visible at the fair", as apparent in the case of Palestinian writer Adania Shibli's prize-giving ceremony and public discussion being canceled.

in response, digital copies of her short novel Minor Detail have been made available for free here. you may also purchase the book online.

[bloodmaarked]

➫ monthly book round-up: june 2024

books read: 11 [+57%] average rating: 3.85 [+23%] average speed: 6.5 days [-7%] total pages: 3,583 [+31%] yearly goal progress: 39/50 [78%] best of the month: babel, or the necessity of violence: an arcane history of the oxford translators' revolution, r.f. kuang worst of the month: the first woman, jennifer nansubuga makumbi

5* reads:

quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking, susan cain

babel, or the necessity of violence: an arcane history of the oxford translators' revolution, r.f. kuang

4.5* reads:

the thursday murder club, richard osman

4* reads:

excuse me while i ugly cry, joya goffney

enola holmes and the black barouche, nancy springer

loud black girls, yomi adegoke + elizabeth uviebinené

3.5* reads:

minor detail, adania shibli

3* reads:

the list, yomi adegoke

circe, madeline miller

2.5* reads:

the first woman, jennifer nansubuga makumbi

DNFs:

back to black: black radicalism for the 21st century, kehinde andrews

currently reading:

dracula, bram stoker

the other black girl, zakiya dalila harris

[arablit]

Short Stories by 10 Palestinian Women, in English Translation

By ArabLit Staff The history of the Palestinian short story in Arabic is marked by many women writers, from the innovative works of mid-century authors like Samira Azzam (1927-1967); to, more than a generation later, Liana Badr; to the more recent innovations of form and language by Maya Abu al-Hayat, Adania Shibli, Sheikha Helawy, and many others. Because of how publishing currently works in…

[garadinervi]

عدنية شبلي (Adania Shibli), Minor Detail, Translated by Elisabeth Jaquette, Fitzcarraldo Editions, London, 2020 [San Serriffe, Amsterdam]

[undercovercannibal]

"sometimes it's inevitable for the past to be forgotten, especially if the present is no less horrific;"

- Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, a book about the Nabka - the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians - and it's consequences to this day.

[obsessioncollector]

The Frankfurt Book Fair, an international book festival in Germany, has cancelled its event for the Berlin-based Palestinian writer Adania Shibli, who was supposed to be given an award for her book Minor Detail, and issued a statement saying the fair "stands with complete solidairity on the side of Israel." Reprehensible in any time, but especially infuriating given Israel's current brutal attacks on Gaza and the content of the novel itself—Minor Detail focuses on the rape and murder of a Palestinian girl by Zionists in 1949, which ultimately ends up as a footnote at most in Zionist histories (hence the title.) I read it earlier this year but it's even more pertinent now. I'm glad that Shibli's publishers and some Arab literary organizations are standing by her, but I can't imagine how maddening it would be to be in her position.

[slicedblackolives]

I’ve been listening to this 2021 interview by adania shibli, the author of minor detail, and when she talks about the complacency of language particularly against those who are not eloquent, who are stuttering and hysterical and repeating details, just really got to me. language and linear narrative’s inherent complacency to victimisation and dispossession.