2024 - Adania Shibli
Palestinian writer Adania Shibli (b. 1974) broke through internationally with her sober and poignant short novel Minor Detail. During her residency at Passa Porta, she wants to find the necessary peace to work on her next book and will not give any interviews.
Shibli holds a PhD from the University of East London, writes in Arabic and has published three novels so far. She lives and works in Berlin and Jerusalem. Her third book Minor Detail (‘Tafsil Thanawi’, 2016, English translation by Elisabeth Jaquette published by Fitzcarraldo/New Directions in 2020) was nominated for the International Booker Prize 2021.
In 2023, Adania Shibli was one of the guests of honour at the Passa Porta Festival. In October that year, international controversy arose when the German literary organisation LitProm decided to postpone the presentation of the LiBeraturpreis for Minor Detail at the Frankfurt Book Fair because of the war between Israel and Hamas. Many prominent authors, such as Annie Ernaux, Olga Tokarczuk, Colm Toíbín and Abdulrazak Gurnah, criticised the Buchmesse in an open letter arguing that the 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.’ A position that Passa Porta fully endorses.