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[Spoiler warning - everything talked about here is included in the publisher's synopsis, but does detail plot points a reader might not want to know prior to reading.]

A quick moving, short novella that I read in one sitting, which is probably the optimal experience of it. It's intriguing and has a sad inevitability about it, more so when you discover the inciting incident is based on a recently declassified historical event. Told in two equal length distinct parts, the first takes place in 1949 and details a 'mop-up' operation in the desert at the end of the first Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following a commander of a small group of soldiers, whose focus is distracted by a poisonous bite on his leg that festers and puts him in an almost hallucinogenic haze. Coming upon a band of harmless Bedouins, the soldiers kill all except a young girl, who is taken back to camp, deloused with gasoline and eventually brutally gang-raped, murdered and buried.

The second half is set contemporaneously and follows a young Palestinian woman (Coetzee's review has proffered she is on the autism spectrum, which seems plausible), who comes across the incident in a newspaper, and is intrigued by the 'minor detail' that the girl's death occurred exactly 25 years prior to her own birth date. She becomes obsessed about learning more, and undertakes a treacherous journey into controlled territory - one can guess all will NOT go well.

The story holds one's attention, and the echoing motifs and phrases in the two parts are a treat to discover, but the spare, flat prose distanced me from the material, and the intentionally repetitious nature of both parts just made me a bit antsy for the author to get on with it. For the minimal time involved in reading, it's worth the effort, but I wouldn't label it a 'must read'.