German book festival cancels award ceremony for Palestinian author

The Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the world's largest gatherings of the publishing industry, has announced the cancellation of an award ceremony slated to honour the novel "Minor Detail" by Palestinian author Adania Shibli.

The cancellation was attributed to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, according to Litprom, the German literary association responsible for organising the prestigious award.

"Minor Detail," originally written in Arabic and translated into German in 2022, chronicles the tragic true story of a 1949 rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers, as revealed by its German publisher, Berenberg Verlag.

The novel's earlier English translation garnered nominations for the National Book Award in 2020 and the International Booker Prize in 2021.

The ceremony was designed to celebrate Shibli's novel for winning the 2023 LiBeraturpreis, a German literature prize presented annually to an author from Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Arab world at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Critics of Shibili

Controversy surrounding the novel ignited in Germany earlier this year when a member of the Litprom jury, Ulrich Noller, resigned in protest of the decision to award the literature prize to Shibli's work.

A critic from the left-leaning German newspaper Die Tageszeitung reignited the debate recently, accusing the book of portraying "the State of Israel as a murder machine," while other German critics have lauded the novel.

The Israel-Hamas conflict has amplified existing divisions within Germany's cultural institutions regarding support for Israel.

Juergen Boos, the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, condemned "Hamas's barbaric terror against Israel" and expressed solidarity with the victims and their families.

He also announced that organisers had decided to provide additional platform time for Israeli voices at the fair.

The Frankfurt Book Fair is scheduled to run from 18th to 22nd October, and Litprom is currently exploring alternative formats and settings for the award ceremony after the conclusion of the fair.