Denis Muller

A ceremony scheduled for the Frankfurt Book Fair, at which a Palestinian author, Adania Shibli, was to receive a prestigious award, has been cancelled in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel.

A jury had awarded Shibli the 2023 LiBeraturpreis award for her novel, Minor Detail. It juxtaposes the true story of the rape and murder of a Bedouin girl by an Israel army unit in 1949 with the fictional story of a female journalist investigating the crime in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, decades later.

The award, which was to be given at a ceremony on 20 October, is hosted by Litprom, a not-for-profit organisation funded in part by the German government, and the Frankfurt Book Fair. Its objective is to promote women’s literature from African, Asian, Arab and Latin American countries.

Nuanced writing on genocidal histories

Ulrich Noller, a journalist, left the LiBeraturpreis jury in