Leading independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions, winner of this year’s Man Booker International, has picked up their first-ever Arabic novel, Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail:
The book was originally published by al-Adab in 2017 and centers around a crime committed in the Palestinian Negev in August, 1949. Decades later, a young woman in Ramallah becomes obsessed with the events surrounding the crime.
Fitzcarraldo editor Jacques Testard called the novel “an intricately layered and devastating work of fiction.”
It’s set to appear in 2019; the name of translator was not mentioned.
Testard further said: “We are thrilled to be welcoming Adania Shibli – our first Arabic-language author – to Fitzcarraldo Editions. She is one of the most exciting and ambitious prose stylists writing in Arabic today and a stellar addition to our list.”
Shibil was born in Palestine in 1974 and was one of the “Beirut39” — 39 exciting novelists under 39. She was also awarded the Young Writer’s Award by the A M Qattan Foundation in 2002 and 2004. Two of her novels have been translated into English and published by Clockroot Books. They are Touch, trans. Paula Haydar, which made the longlist for the Best Translated Book Award; and We Are All Equally Far From Love, trans. Paul Starkey.
Also by Shibli:
On East-West Dialogue, translated by Suneela Mubayi
Chapter 11:5.2016 Classic Edition (Pirated and Plagiarised), translated by Shibli
