TOUCH by Adania Shibli

Translated by Paula Haydar

Before she shot to fame as the centre of the great Frankfurt Book Fair shitstorm of 2023, Adania Shibli had already established herself as one of the most interesting and challenging contemporary Palestinian writers. Her most recent novella, Minor Detail, is a work of stark and harrowing realism. Touch, her debut, is an altogether different affair.

In prose so beautifully ethereal it borders on poetry, Shibli tells the seemingly ordinary tale of a young woman. In episodic fragments we see her going about her daily life - picking rust from the water tower, arguing with her siblings, watching the rainbow, falling in love with a local boy. But there is a dark tension underlying it all, one that spills out when her brother dies. Otherwise, history only laps at the edges - fleeting mentions of Sabra and Shatila, the confiscation of a ruler that says Palestine.

As the title suggests, Touch is a deeply sensory book; deeply feeling and deeply felt. And while its poetry sometimes leans to the obscure, it still stands as a searing testament to one young woman’s growing understanding of the complexity of her Palestinian identity.

Touch by Adania Shibli (Tr. Paula Haydar)
Clockroot Books, 2010
72 pages