Awards
Praise for Celestial Bodies
The Week, 1 of 25 Books to Read in the Second Half of the Year
Publishers Weekly, One of the Big Indie Books of the Season
Time, 1 of 15 New Books You Should Read This Month
The Washington Post, 1 of 18 Books to Read This Season
O, The Oprah Magazine, 1 of 10 Titles to Pick Up Now
One of the Chicago Review of Books's Best Books of the Month
One of Refinery29's Favorite Books of the Month
The Millions, Most Anticipated (This Month)
Southern Living, 1 of 5 Great New Books to Read This Month
Literary Hub, 1 of 10 New Books You Should Be Reading This Week
The Christian Science Monitor, 1 of the 10 Best Books of the Month
Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize
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.
Review
"The Omani novelist Jokha al-Harthi's breathtaking, layered, multigenerational novel Celestial Bodies, which was beautifully translated into English, follows the lives of three sisters from a small village at a time of rapid social and economic change in Oman. The tale is replete with history, poetry, and philosophy, but also slavery, broken marriages, passion, and not-so-secret lovers." The Atlantic
Review
"Althari's unique structure demands vigilant participation as it is more jigsaw puzzle than linear narrative, and the skeletal family tree proves useful . . . Pieced together, a robust village emerges, of alliances and betrayals, survival and murder, surrender and escape. Patient readers will be seductively, magnificently rewarded." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"With exhilarating results, Alharthi throws the reader into the midst of a tangled family drama in which unrequited love, murder, suicide, and adultery seem the rule rather than the exception . . . The novel rewards readers willing to assemble the pieces of Alharthi's puzzle into a whole, and is all the more satisfying for the complexity of its tale." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"[A] sweeping story of generational and societal change . . . The great strength of the novel lies in the ways this change is shown not as a steady progression from old to new but as a far more complicated series of small-scale transitions . . . A richly layered, ambitious work that teems with human struggles and contradictions, providing fascinating insight into Omani history and society." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
About the Author
Jokha Alharthi is the first Omani woman to have a novel translated into English, and Celestial Bodies is the first book translated from the Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize. Alharthi is the author of two previous 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 short-listed for the Sheikh Zayed Award for Young Authors and her short stories have been published in English, German, Italian, Korean, and Serbian.
Marilyn Booth holds the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Chair for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World, Oriental Institute and Magdalen College, Oxford University. In addition to her academic publications, she has translated many works of fiction from the Arabic, most recently The Penguin's Song and No Road to Paradise, both by Lebanese novelist Hassan Daoud.