English translation In 2020 the book was reviewed for
The Guardian by Anthony Cummins and
Fatima Bhutto. Cummins called the book a "highly sophisticated narrative that pitilessly explores the limits of empathy and the desire to right... historical wrongs by giving voice to the voiceless". Nirmala Devi, writing in
ArtReview, summarised the theme as "ostensibly a tale about the banality of brutality and the ability of the powerful to erase the powerless", concluding that the novel and its translation are "extraordinary masterclass in how to do things with words and the lacunae in between". Writing for
The New York Times, Abhrajyoti Chakraborty commented on the novel's two-part structure, writing that "perhaps the details in the two stories mirror each other because the past isn’t even past".
German translation and the LiBeraturpreis Following the publication of the German edition in 2022, in 2023 the novel was selected for the 2023 by the German literary organisation
LitProm. A few days before the announced date, LitProm cancelled the ceremony at the
Frankfurt Book Fair and postponed it to an unspecified date, citing the ongoing
Gaza war. More than 1,000 authors and intellectuals, including
Colm Tóibín,
Hisham Matar,
Kamila Shamsie,
William Dalrymple as well as
Nobel Prize winners
Abdulrazak Gurnah,
Annie Ernaux, and
Olga Tokarczuk, criticised the Frankfurt Book Fair and wrote in an open letter that the Book Fair had “a responsibility to be creating spaces for Palestinian writers to share their thoughts, feelings, reflections on literature through these terrible, cruel times, not shutting them down”. Before the Book Fair decision, the book had attracted criticism from several German critics. Ulrich Noller, a journalist on the Litprom jury, resigned from the jury in protest, claiming that the novel has “
anti-Israel and
antisemitic narratives". Similar sentiments were echoed by , a literary critic associated with the German newspaper
Die Tageszeitung, who wrote that the book contained a white-and-black narrative: “All Israelis are anonymous rapists and killers, while the Palestinians are victims of poisoned or trigger-happy occupiers.” In his article of 13 October in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, literary scholar and journalist referred to an interview with Shibli that he had conducted in 2022, quoting Shibli's statements as a writer interested in the literary representation of topics such as control and fear of a person, thereby enabling the author and reader to gain hidden insights about themselves. Shibli condemned any form of nationalism and had spoken out in favour of "perceiving the pain of others". In response to his questions about her identity as a Palestinian, "Shibli was wary of political statements and especially of agitation. Instead, she insisted on appreciating her novel
Minor Detail — and fiction writing more generally — as a place for thinking about language, place, and identity, which always depends on who is reading it”. == Analysis ==