Celestial Bodies, Jokha Alharthi
Celestial Bodies, Jokha Alharthi
6 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Celestial Bodies

Author: Jokha Alharthi, Marilyn Booth

Narrator: Laurence Bouvard

Unabridged: 8 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/15/2019

Categories: Fiction, Family Life


Synopsis

In the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who chooses to refuse all offers and await a reunion with the man she loves, who has emigrated to Canada.

These three women and their families, their losses and loves, unspool beautifully against a backdrop of a rapidly changing Oman, a country evolving from a traditional, slave-owning society into its complex present. Through the sisters, we glimpse a society in all its degrees, from the very poorest of the local slave families to those making money through the advent of new wealth.

The first novel originally written in Arabic to ever win the Man Booker International Prize, and the first book by a female Omani author to be translated into English, Celestial Bodies marks the arrival in the United States of a major international writer.

About Jokha Alharthi

Jokha Alharthi is the author of two collections of short fiction, a children's book, and three novels in Arabic. Fluent in English, she completed a PhD in Classical Arabic Poetry in Edinburgh, and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat. She has been shortlisted for the Sahikh Zayed Award for Young Writers and her short stories have been published in English, German, Italian, Korean, and Serbian.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on September 26, 2019

This is the winner of the 2019 International Man Booker Prize and that was one of the things that drew me to read this book. The other was that while I’ve heard of Oman, I didn’t know much about it, except that it was in the Middle East. I had to look at a map to see exactly where. I ended up having......more

Goodreads review by Jibran on January 24, 2021

Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2019 Life appeared to her sharply divided in two parts, like night and day: what we live, and what lives inside of us. It would not be an exaggeration to call this novel a microcosm of modern Oman. It takes a wider view of the monumental changes that have t......more

Goodreads review by Paul on May 21, 2019

Now winner of the 2019 Man Booker International An interesting choice by the judges, a book whose strengths lie in its deep cultural insights and clever construction. The moon is the treasure house for what is on high and what lies below. The moon moves between high and low, between the sublime and th......more