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Jokha Al harthi from Oman has become the first Arabic-language writer to win the Man Booker International Prize with Celestial Bodies. Al Harthi, an assistant professor at College of Arts and Social Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, is part of the new generation of writers which is changing the act of writing across the Arab world.
A versatile writer, Al Harthi’s diverse oeuvre includes novels, children’s books, short stories and academic studies. Many of her short stories have been translated into English, Serbian, Korean, Italian and German.
Al Harth holds a doctorate in classical Arabic literature from University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She is the first woman novelist from Oman to be translated into English. Her winning novel tells the story of three sisters and a desert country confronting its slave-owning past and a complex modern world.
Celestial Bodies beat five other finalists from Europe and South America, including last year’s winner, Olga Tokarczuk from Poland. The author plans to split the £50,000 prize money with her translator, US professor Marilyn Booth.
Jurist chair and historian Bettany Hughes describes the book as a masterpiece which is worth lingering over: "A book to win over the head and the heart in equal measure, worth lingering over. Interweaving voices and timelines are beautifully served by the pacing of the novel. Its delicate artistry draws us into a richly imagined community — opening out to tackle profound questions of time and mortality and disturbing aspects of our shared history. The style is a metaphor for the subject, subtly resisting clichés of race, slavery and gender. The translation is precise and lyrical, weaving in the cadences of both poetry and everyday speech. Celestial Bodies evokes the forces that constrain us and those that set us free." — Agencies
Of heartbreak & love
Celestial Bodies is set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, where we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society which is slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present. Elegantly structured and taut, it tells of Oman’s coming-of-age through the prism of one family’s losses and loves.
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