March 26, 2025, 9:15am
Small presses have had a rough year, but as the literary world continues to conglomerate, we at Literary Hub think they’re more important than ever. Which is why, every (work) day in March—which just so happens to be National Small Press Month—a Lit Hub staff member will be recommending a small press book that they love.
The only rule of this game is that there are no rules, except that the books we recommend must have been published, at some time, and in some place, by a small press. What does it mean to be a small press? Unfortunately there is no exact definition or cutoff. All of the presses mentioned here are considered to be small presses by the recommending editors, and for our purposes, that’s going to be good enough. All of the books mentioned here are considered to be great by the recommending editors, too. If one intrigues you, consider picking it up at your local bookstore, or ordering through Bookshop.org, or even directly from the publisher.
Today, we’re recommending:
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, tr. Elisabeth Jacquette
published by New Directions (2017)
New Directions has published so many stone-cold masterpieces over the years (Fleur Jaeggy’s Sweet Days of Discipline, Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai, W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Rachel Ingalls’ Mrs. Caliban, and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos, to name but a few) that it’s a painful task trying to restrict myself to just one recommendation.
If you came to Minor Detail without any prior knowledge of the historical context, you would still find yourself mesmerized, but to read it against the backdrop of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the turbocharged assault on the West Bank, and the renewed interrogation of the individual atrocities that were carried out during the Nakba, is to feel a chilling relevance that, for me, lifts the book to the very top of the ND podium right now.
Adania Shibli’s spare, devastating novella is divided into two parts. The first tells the story of the Nirim affair—the real-life gang rape and murder of a teenage Arab Bedouin-Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers in 1949—from the perspective of the Israeli platoon’s coldly sadistic commander. The second (often bleakly humorous) part follows a somewhat eccentric Palestinian woman in modern-day Ramallah as she searches for information about the crime. Her quest should be a simple one, but navigating the dark labyrinth of the occupation makes every move, every checkpoint and inquiry, fraught with menace.
There’s little hope to be found in these pages, just as there’s little hope to be found in Palestine right now, but as an act of witness, and as a work of art, Minor Detail is a remarkable achievement.
–Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor-in-Chief