CANR

Assistant Professor, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University.
PhD in Classical Arabic Literature, University of Edinburgh- Scotland- UK, 2010
Published Books:

A novel “Narinjah” (Bitter Orange), 2016.
A children book ”The Cloud Wishes”, 2015.
A collection of poems Diwan Ahmed b. Abdullah, gathered and edited by Jokha Alharthi.2014.
A study,”Mulahaqat al-shumus: manhaj al-talif al-adabi fi “Kharidat al-qasr” ” (Chasing The Suns: The Literary Methodology In The Book Of “Kharidat al-Qasr”) 2010.
A novel “Sayyidat al-Qamar” (Ladies of the Moon) 2010
A children book “ushsh lil-Asafir” (Nest for Birds) 2010
A collection of short stories “fi Madih al-Hubb” (Impressing Love) 2008
A Novel “Manamat” (Dreams) 2004
A collection of short stories “Sabi Ala al-Sath” (A Boy on the roof) 2007
A study, co-authors “Dirasat Fi Adab Oman Wa al-Khalij” (Studies in Oman and Gulf Literature), 2003
A collection of short stories “Maqati Min Sirat Lubna Ith Aana al-Rahil” “Excerpts from Lubna’s Autobiography when it is Time to Leave” 2001
Books to be publish
The Body in Udhri Love Poetry, (English)
Ladies of the Moon, novel (translated into English by Marilyn Booth)
Translations:
Some of my shorts stories has been translated to English, Serbian, Korean, Italian and German and published in English, Serbian, Korean, Italian and German literary magazines: Lisan, Knjizevni list, Margutte, Novel of the World
Banipal, Lisan, 2007.
Banipal, July 2009. http://www.banipal.co.uk/two short stories, Beloved and The Wedding translated by Ibtihaj Al-Harthi
Knjizevni list, 11 November 2009.
Banipal, April 2011.A chapter from the novel Sayyidat al-Qamar (Women of the Moon), translated by Sophia Vasalou
Short Stories by 20 Arab Women Writers, Korea, 2012.
Banipal, Spring 2014 On the Wooden Park Bench . . . We Sat, translated by Clare Roberts
The Wedding in Omani Short Stories, translated by Mohammed Alalawi, Bait Alghasham, 2014.
Banipal, 51, The Widow Marries, an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, translated by Robin Moger,
“The Eid Slow – Roast” in Novel of the World, EXPO MILANO, 2015.
“The Galloping Horses” in Italian.

Awards:
Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature for the Novel “Narinjah”, 2016.
Short listed in Sahikh Zayed Award, “sayyidat alqamar” December 2011.
The best Omani novel, “Sayyidat al-Qamar”, 2010.
The best Omani children book “ush al-asafir”, 2010.
The second place in al-Shariqa award for the first collection of short stories, 2001.

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi: Sandstone Press signs winner of Best Omani Novels

Sandstone Press has signed an evocative literary Middle Eastern novel, translated from Arabic, after its great success in Oman. The publisher acquired English-language rights from the Wylie Agency.

Elegantly structured and taut, Celestial Bodies is a coiled spring of a novel, telling of Oman’s coming-of-age through the prism of one family’s losses and loves. The novel explores the lives of three sisters as they witness Oman slowly redefining itself from a traditional, slave-owning society, to its complex present state, where social mores parley with aspiration, technology, and oil money.

Robert Davidson, Managing Director at Sandstone Press, says ‘We are delighted to welcome Jokha Alharthi and Celestial Bodies to Sandstone Press. Our translated novels, to the present time, are all from northern Europe. This new book, with its excellent translation by Marilyn Booth, takes us into Arabic territory, specifically Oman, for the first time. It is a high quality, literary page-turner, and we look forward to putting it before its English language readership.’
Charles Buchan of the Wylie agency adds that ’It is a great pleasure to be working with Sandstone Press on introducing Jokha’s exquisite novel in English.’

Jokha al-Harthi
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Jokha al-Harthi
Born
1978 (age 40–41)
Oman
Nationality
Omani
Occupation
Writer and academic
Known for
Man Booker prize 2019
Notable work
Celestial Bodies
Jokha al-Harthi (Arabic: جوخة الحارثي‎; born July 1978)[1] is an Omani writer and academic. She was educated in Oman and in the United Kingdom. She obtained her PhD in classical Arabic literature from Edinburgh University. She is currently an associate professor in the Arabic department at Sultan Qaboos University.[2]
al-Harthi has published three collections of short stories and three novels (Manamat, Sayyidat el-Qamar and Narinjah).[3] She has also authored academic works. Her work has been translated into English, Serbian, Korean, Italian, and German and published in Banipal magazine.[4] She was also one of eight participants in the 2011 IPAF Nadwa (writers' workshop). al-Harthi won the Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature, for her novel Narinjah (Bitter Orange) in 2016.
Sayyidat el-Qamar was shortlisted for Zayed Award 2011 and has been translated into English by Marilyn Booth. It was published in the UK by Sandstone Press in June 2018 under the title Celestial Bodies, and won the Man Booker International Prize 2019.[5]

Man Booker International prize: Jokha Alharthi wins for Celestial Bodies
This article is more than 1 month old
First female Omani novelist to be translated into English shares £50,000 prize with translator Marilyn Booth – the first time an Arabic book has won
Alison Flood
Tue 21 May 2019 21.38 BST
Last modified on Wed 22 May 2019 00.15 BST

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Jokha Alharthi with translator Marilyn Booth. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Jokha Alharthi, the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English, has won the Man Booker International prize for her novel Celestial Bodies.
Alharthi, the £50,000 award’s first winner to write in Arabic, shares the prize equally with her translator, American academic Marilyn Booth. Celestial Bodies is set in the Omani village of al-Awafi and follows the stories of three sisters: Mayya, who marries into a rich family after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries for duty; and Khawla, waiting for a man who has emigrated to Canada.
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi review – love and loss in Oman
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Chair of judges for the prize, historian Bettany Hughes said: “Through the different tentacles of people’s lives and loves and losses we come to learn about this society – all its degrees, from the very poorest of the slave families working there to those making money through the advent of a new wealth in Oman and Muscat. It starts in a room and ends in a world.
“We felt we were getting access to ideas and thoughts and experiences you aren’t normally given in English. It avoids every stereotype you might expect in its analysis of gender and race and social distinction and slavery. There are surprises throughout. We fell in love with it.”
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Celestial Bodies was selected from an almost entirely female and independently published shortlist to win the award, which goes to the finest work of translated fiction from around the world. Alharthi saw off competition from writers including former winner Olga Tokarczuk, acclaimed French author Annie Ernaux and Colombia’s Juan Gabriel Vásquez.
Hughes said the judges had loved “the subtle artistry” of Alharthi’s novel. “It’s less flamboyant than some of the other books, there’s a kind of poetic cunning to it. It starts feeling like a domestic drama in a fascinating world, but with the layers of philosophy, psychology and poetry, you are drawn into the prose, through the relationship between the characters. It encouraged us to read in a slightly different way.”
In an interview after the novel was longlisted,Booth said she was delighted that the award was bringing Omani literature to the attention of a wider audience. But she added that Arabic fiction had a tendency to be seen as “a road map to the Arab world rather than first and foremost as art, as imaginative writing, pushing the boundaries of what can be thought and said”.
“What one really learns here ‘about the Arab world’ is that there are amazing fictionalists … throughout the region, not only in the better-known hubs of literary creation such as Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco and many other places, but in a country that is less literarily mapped, like Oman,” said Booth. “And perhaps what one learns most is how alike they are in their dailiness, human exchange and emotions, and how societies that might appear so different are really so very much alike.”
Celestial Bodies is published by Inverness’s Sandstone Press and is its first venture into Arabic literature. Alharthi, who has written two other novels, two short-story collections and a children’s book, and has been translated into languages including German, Italian, Korean and Serbian, said she hoped Celestial Bodies would help “international readers discover that Oman has an active and talented writing community who live and work for their art”.
Before learning she had won, the author added: “They take on sacrifices and struggles and find joy in writing, or in art, much the same way as anywhere else. This is something the whole world has in common. Omanis, through their writing, invite others to look at Oman with an open mind and heart. No matter where you are, love, loss, friendship, pain and hope are the same feelings and humanity still has a lot of work to do to believe in this truth.”
Hughes was joined on the judging panel for the prize by writer, translator and chair of English PEN Maureen Freely, philosopher Angie Hobbs, novelist and satirist Elnathan John, and essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra.

Interview
Jokha Alharthi: ‘A lot of women are really strong, even though they are slaves'
Aida Edemariam
Fiction in translation

The first Omani woman translated in English and winner of the Man Booker International prize reflects on her ‘lucky book’ Celestial Bodies and Oman’s uneasy relationship with its history
Mon 8 Jul 2019 10.00 BST
Last modified on Mon 8 Jul 2019 13.27 BST

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Jokha Alharthi, the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English, has won the Man Booker International prize for her novel Celestial Bodies. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian
J
okha Alharthi’s second novel, Celestial Bodies, may have its roots in rural Oman – its irrigation canals and high desert nights, its cool back rooms and busy courtyards – but it was born in Edinburgh. Alharthi was studying for a PhD at the university, she had an eight-month-old baby, and she and her husband had had difficulty finding a place to live and so were renting a small flat from week to week. Her stress was compounded by the fact that, although her PhD was in classical Arabic poetry, she was expected “to write fluent English, and to write fluent essays, and I was like, I never did that! I never did that. So I just came back to the flat one night and got the baby to sleep, and just sat there with my laptop thinking about – not exactly Oman, but a different life, and a different language. And because I love my language so much, I felt the need to write in my own language. So I just started writing.” She had already published one book, Dream, “a love story, kind of”, and for a long time had been thinking of another, with snatches of ideas and characters and places. “It wasn’t all clear in my mind, but I kept thinking about them, and also about the traditional ways, which are rapidly vanishing in Oman.” But she “hadn’t started yet, until that moment, when it was a really difficult moment for me. So it was like going back to my mother’s womb again, to feel warm, and secure. The novel – I don’t want to say it saved me, it’s a big word – but kind of.”

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Just over a decade later, in May this year, Celestial Bodies won the International Man Booker prize. Alharthi beat finalists including last year’s winner, Polish bestseller Olga Tokarczuk, and joined previous winners including Korean author Han Kang; it was the first book from any Arab country to win. We meet the morning after, in a bright many windowed room on the top floor of the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects in central London. Alharthi sits next to her translator, Marilyn Booth, who remembers that the translation, too, began in Edinburgh: Alharthi had not yet finished her PhD when her supervisor retired, and Booth took over (she is now professor in the study of the contemporary Arab world at Oxford). “She brought me her novel. And I just really loved it, and wanted to translate it.” Booth was so keen that she completed the translation before they had a publisher lined up, “which is not always a good idea”, she says. Celestial Bodies is the first novel by an Omani woman ever translated into English, and the prize, £50,000, is split equally between them.

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Jokha Alharthi with translator Marilyn Booth at a ceremony for the Man Booker International prize in May 2019. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
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The book tells the story of three generations of a family from a village called al-Awafi. There are three daughters, their father and mother, their children and their husbands’ parents. The birth of a child called London (the capital of a foreign city, a Christian city no less, whisper appalled neighbours and relatives) is the hub from which all sorts of spokes radiate, then spin with speed and impressive control: within six pages we have been presented with an animating tragedy, and a memorable account of a woman giving birth, “standing as tall as a grand mare”. Alharthi’s characters are pleasingly contradictory and fallible, irreducibly individual. A doting new father brings cases of baby food for an unweaned infant, an act that is “unnecessary and slightly disgraceful”; a former slave locked away as “mad” by an embarrassed daughter calls out, whenever she hears a noise in the courtyard, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m Masoud and I’m in here”.
To say that Celestial Bodies is a multi-generational saga simplifies what Alharthi has done, which is also to tell the story of how Oman has changed over the last century, from a traditional rural patriarchal society where Islam was complemented by Zār spirit worship, and which was among the last countries in the world to abolish slavery (in 1970), to an urban, oil-rich Gulf state. And she has done so in a form that shifts from voice to voice, viewpoint to viewpoint, decade to decade, sometimes within a single paragraph or sentence. It is no surprise that, as well as 10th-century Arabic poets such as Abū al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn Husayn al-Mutanabbī, and the more recent Mahmoud Darwish, Alharthi counts among her favourite writers Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata and Anton Chekhov, and that the first piece of fiction she published, at 18, was a short story. She has since written three collections of stories, which have been translated into five languages, as well as children’s books.
What attracts us to literature is not that it’s familiar to us, it’s that we can relate to the universal value in it
Celestial Bodies was first published in 2010, and it has been a “lucky book” says Alharthi, who is 40 and is in person as direct and unshowily confident as her prose. “I think books are like people, some have lucky lives, and this book got a lot of attention.” The critics loved it, a master’s thesis has been written about it, and last year a critical study. She does almost all of our interview in fluent and authoritative English, but now she turns to Booth: “I want to say this in Arabic if you don’t mind, to put this in precise words – I don’t want to get it wrong.” “Some people feel that touching upon a sensitive topic like slavery is stirring up the past in a way that isn’t appropriate now,” says Booth after a moment, “because Oman is another country, and slavery is something of the past. But she’s saying that that’s what literature does – it’s to think about the past, to think about history.”
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Alharthi grew up immersed in history and especially in Arabic literature. An uncle was a poet and travel writer; her grandfather was a poet who “when I was a child, in every situation would recite verses from Al-Mutanabbī to justify his position” – just as one of her characters, Azzan, does, to his beautiful Bedouin lover, who finds it increasingly alienating and irritating. Booth, who studies modern Arabic language and culture, and whose Arabic is in fact Egyptian Arabic (she has never been to Oman, and had to ask Alharthi to send her photos of typically Omani things she had not come across before), found these poems, with their double meanings and referents that stretch a thousand years into the past, by far the most challenging sections to translate. “She hated me for it!” laughs Alharthi.

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Alharthi lives in Muscat with her husband and three children. She teaches classical Arabic literature at Sultan Qaboos University. Photograph: Alamy
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When Alharthi’s mother was growing up in the village of Al-Qabil there was no schooling beyond basic reading and writing for anyone, male or female, unless you went to the capital, Muscat, so she taught herself poetry, reciting it as she went about her daily chores. By the time Alharthi and her siblings were born things had changed, though there still wasn’t a kindergarten, so her father, who was the local governor, forged their birth certificates so they could start school early. “He thought we were too smart to sit at home.” Alharthi, who now lives in Muscat and teaches classical Arabic literature at Sultan Qaboos University, is one of eight sisters and four brothers. And where do you come? “OK, let me see,” she counts them off on her fingers, under her breath. “I think I’m number four.” The others have gone on to work in a wide range of jobs, from oil company employee to a brother in the foreign ministry and a sister who runs a communications company. Alharthi herself is married to a civil engineer and they have three children.
One of the many striking things in Celestial Bodies is the way Alharthi refuses easy assumptions about power, and people’s roles in the world. There is a moment, for instance, where she focuses on the childhood of one of the main characters, a matriarch, Salima, who started off as a poor female relative. Then she was not allowed to eat or be clothed as an equal with rich relatives, but at the same time she was not allowed to mix with the servants, to bathe like them, or dance as the slave girls do. Adult Salima cannot abide Zarifa, a former slave from her son-in-law’s family, who runs the household, has the love and devotion of her supposed master and his son, and has the power in all but name. “For me it’s always complicated,” says Alharthi, “the relationships are complicated, and people claim their authority wherever they are. A lot of women are really strong, even though they are slaves actually, but they still can be strong.” Each chapter is named after the person from whose point of view it is told, but it is interesting that the only one who speaks in the first person is a man, Abdallah – again supposedly the inheritor of riches, a businessman, the head of his household, the man in a man’s world who ought to have all the power. “But Abdallah doesn’t!” says Alharthi, partly because of old hurts, partly because of the intensity with which he loves someone who does not love him back, partly because his world is changing so fast, partly because of the strength of the women who surround him. “You’d assume that the first-person character is the one who’s got some authority,” adds Booth, “and he’s really the most vulnerable.”
How does Alharthi feel about the much wider readership this prize might give her? She is silent for a while. “I don’t know, it is strange … yanni” – she turns again to Booth; English phrases pop like bubbles out of urgent Arabic. “It’s wonderful to have a bigger readership,” says Booth at last, “and to have readers everywhere, but it’s also a slightly strange feeling, because these are characters that came out of her mind. They developed within her own thinking and they’re going out into the world and other people are reading about them and thinking about them, and it’s slightly hard to let go.” Or, as Salima says about her daughters: “We raise them so that strangers can take them away.” There is the further point of culture, says Alharthi, which is that “when it was published in Arabic, the Arabic audience in general and the Omani audience in particular can easily relate to the novel” – and non-Arabs cannot really be expected to feel the same sense of recognition. “But I still think that what attracts us to literature is not that it’s familiar to us, it’s that we can relate to the universal value in it. Even if it has a very strong mahaliya” – “localness”, supplies Booth – “still I hope that international readers can relate to the universal values in it.”
• Celestial Bodies is published by Sandstone (RRP £8.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

Jokha Alharthi: 5 things to know about the Man Booker International winner

PhDs, prizes and... a trip to Scotland – here's all you need to know about the Omani author and her novel 'Celestial Bodies'

Jokha Alharthi at the Man Booker International Prize ceremony in London last month. Getty Images
Omani author Jokha Alharthi has won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Celestial Bodies, scooping the £50,000 (Dh233,465) award, which she shares with the translator, American academic Marilyn Booth.
Celestial Bodies, which is set in the Omani village of al-Awafi and orbits around the lives and loves of three sisters, is the first novel originally written in Arabic to win the award.
Chair of the judges Bettany Hughes said: “It avoids every stereotype you might expect in its analysis of gender and race and social distinction and slavery. There are surprises throughout. We fell in love with it.”
Alharthi, 41, now takes her place at literature’s top table, with Celestial Bodies destined to become one of this year’s most talked-about and widely-read novels (last year’s winning author, Olga Tokarczuk, saw sales of her novel, Flights, increase by 692 per cent).
With that in mind, here are five things you may not know about Alharthi.
1. She is the first author from the Arabian Gulf to win this award
Not only that, Alharthi is one of only six Arab authors ever to be nominated for the Man Booker International Prize. Speaking before the announcement, however, Alharthi explained that the characters in Celestial Bodies experience universal feelings of “love, loss, friendship, pain and hope”.

Jokha Alharthi (left) and translator Marilyn Booth pose after winning the Man Booker International Prize for 'Celestial Bodies'. Photo: Isabel Infantes
“They take on sacrifices and struggles and find joy in writing, or in art, much the same way as anywhere else,” said Alharthi, who grew up in a family of poets and was first published at the age of 19. “This is something the whole world has in common. Omanis, through their writing, invite others to look at Oman with an open mind and heart.”
And the firsts keep coming: Alharthi is also the first Omani author ever to have a novel translated into English.
2. She is the author of two other novels
Celestial Bodies – or Sayyidat al-Qamar – was originally published in 2010 and was Alharthi’s second novel, following her 2004 debut, Manamat (Dreams). In 2016, Alharthi’s third novel, Narinjah (Bitter Orange), was published and went on to win that year’s Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature. Celestial Bodies is the only one of Alharthi’s novels to be translated into English – so far.
Read More
• The inspiration behind Omani author Jokha Alharthi's Man Booker-winning novel
• 'Celestial Bodies' shines a light on Omani literature
• Man Booker International Prize 2019: first Gulf author is longlisted
Added to this, Alharthi has written three short-story collections and two children’s books. She was nominated for a Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the “Young Authors” category in 2012.
3. She came up with the idea for Celestial Bodies in… Scotland
Yes, you read that correctly. Alharthi was studying for a PhD in classical Arabic literature at Edinburgh University when inspiration struck.
“The plots and characters were partially in my mind,” she said in a recent interview with The National. “But the actual starting point for Celestial Bodies was that I was feeling a little homesick. So I indulged in writing about these people back in Oman.”
Celestial Bodies was published by independent Scottish publisher Sandstone Press.
Alharthi has since returned to Oman and now teaches at the Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat.
4. She has not written ‘a road-map to the Arab world’
If you pick up Celestial Bodies hoping to read some kind of “Beginners’ Guide” to Arab or Omani culture, you’ll be disappointed, says translator Marilyn Booth, who actually helped Alharthi with her thesis at Edinburgh University.
“Too often, Arabic fiction is thought of as a road-map to the Arab world rather than first and foremost as art, as imaginative writing, pushing the boundaries of what can be thought and said,” Booth explained in a recent interview.
“Perhaps what one learns most is how alike they are in their daily [life], human exchange and emotions, and how societies that might appear so different are really so very much alike.”

'Celestial Bodies' by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth, which has won the Man Booker International Prize. Photo: Isabel Infantes
5. She is currently working on a fourth novel
Not too much is known about Alharthi’s next project but Booth confirmed at the Man Booker International Prize ceremony that she hopes to translate the novel once it has been published – although she hopes that, for her sake at least, there is less poetry in this one.
“One of many rich things about Jokha’s work, which also made it very hard at times to translate, is that there’s quite a lot of poetry in the novel,” said Booth in an interview with Publishing Perspectives.
“But I have to say that as a translator, every time I got to another poem, I’d think, ‘Oh, Jokha, don’t do this to me again.’”

May 22, 2019
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Celestial Bodies: The inspiration behind Omani author Jokha Alharthi's Man Booker-winning novel

The writer hopes ‘Celestial Bodies’ will not be the last Omani novel to be translated into English

Jokha Alharthi and translator Marilyn Booth won the Man Booker International Prize for Celestial Bodies. Man Booker Prize
Jokha Alharthi is a woman of many firsts. On May 21, she became the first author from the Arabian Gulf to win the prestigious Man Booker International Prize, and she was the first Omani author ever to have her novel, Celestial Bodies, translated from Arabic into English.
So how did Alharthi arrive at this groundbreaking position? Through a simple longing for home.
Rewind about 10 years ago. Alharthi was in Edinburgh, working on her doctorate in classical Arabic poetry. She also had an idea for a novel that explored the lives and relationships of three sisters in a changing Oman could be explored.

“The plots and characters were partially in my mind,” she says. “But the actual starting point for Celestial Bodies was that I was feeling a little homesick. So I indulged in writing about these people back in Oman.”
Read More
Gulf author shortlisted for Man Booker International Prize for the first time
'Celestial Bodies' shines a light on Omani literature
Man Booker International Prize 2019: first Gulf author is longlisted
What winning the Man Booker Prize means for Alharthi
Alharthi could not have predicted at the time that the book she wrote would win the prestigious Man Booker International Prize, not least because the award did not exist in its current format, with a book in English translation now awarded the £50,000 (Dh237,160) prize every year.
Alharthi was up against five other authors who wrote novels in French, Spanish, German and Polish.
Winning the prize will be life-changing for the Omani author, and not simply because of the cash prize she will share with translator Marilyn Booth.
Polish author Olga Tokarczuk won last year (she is shortlisted again this year for Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead) and sales of her book, Flights, increased by 692 per cent.

I am happy that people will read Celestial Bodies but I also hope readers will wish to read other Arabic literature, and other authors from the Gulf. It’s definitely an opportunity for Omani literature to be read and appreciated by a wider audience.
Jokha Alharthi
Alharthi's triumph this year, could also lead to a rise in the popularity of Arabic and Gulf literature.
“I am happy that people will read Celestial Bodies but I also hope readers will wish to read other Arabic literature, and other authors from the Gulf,” she says.
“It’s definitely an opportunity for Omani literature to be read and appreciated by a wider audience."
The first steps towards making Celestial Bodies more widely known were taken when independent Scottish publisher Sandstone Press took on the English translation a few years ago. Booth took on the project after receiving a translation grant from the Anglo Omani Society.
“We are incredibly proud of our part in bringing this talented novelist to the attention of Europe and the world,” says Sandstone’s managing director, Robert Davidson. “This is a fine novel that makes real a history and a people and their possible futures.”
Alharthi says it feels strange to be talking once more about a novel she wrote so long ago.
“Every writer changes over time, so I could not have written it in exactly the same way today,” she says. “But I remain proud of the novel and its new international life.”
Telling Oman's history through her novel
It’s tempting to consider how the three sisters in Celestial Bodies, Mayya, Asthma and Khawla, might be faring in 2019.
“That’s a wonderful thought,” Alharthi says. “I hope the three sisters are happy now, but I would have to give this much more thought.
"In the novel, they all fare very differently in love and demonstrate an independence of spirit, complexity and strength, which I believe is true of women in Oman now.”
The family histories explained in Celestial Bodies can be treated as an explanation of how Oman has changed. Book-lovers in the West who might be tempted to open the novel after seeing it win the Man Booker International Prize might not have been aware that slavery was only abolished in Oman in 1970.

“In Oman, at least, some readers were pleased that a taboo subject such as slavery was explored in the novel,” Alharthi says. “But other readers would have preferred me not to write about it, because by writing about it the subject is acknowledged, and one has to face history.
"It is very important to me to try to give voice to as many experiences as possible in my writing, and it’s why fiction can be so important, because it allows readers to experience history through a good story.
“Sometimes history is making itself felt in the novel through alliances; Abdallah is the son of a successful merchant and, theoretically at least, a good prospective husband for Mayya.
"But Abdallah is raised by Zarifa, who is a freed slave who remains in the merchant’s house and behaves as a free woman. These connections need not be overtly made by the reader, or immediately made, but the weight of history in the present is very important throughout the book.”
What if the story took place in 2019?
Abdallah is a fascinating character in Celestial Bodies. He is the only first-person narrator in the book and, as Alharthi says, he is also a sad voice in the story.
He shifts between the memories of his past and changes that take place in the present, sometimes in the space of a paragraph, which makes for an intriguing and densely structured novel.
“One moment he is a boy being punished by being suspended from palm rope in a well, the next his daughter is asking him to buy her a BMW,” Alharthi says. “The pace of change in Oman is starkly presented through him.”
When Abdallah tries to be a modern man and talk about love and feelings, he is mocked for using “TV show words”.
As much as Celestial Bodies stridently offers compelling female characters, there is also some sympathy for the lot of a 21st century man in Oman.

Sometimes it is hard to escape a past or make a new start, even when love holds out the possibility of a new future.
Jokha Alharthi
“Sometimes it is hard to escape a past or make a new start, even when love holds out the possibility of a new future,” Alharthi says.
“Abdallah is mocked for expressing his feelings. Feelings are not pragmatic, after all. Love is hard-won in the novel, unless love chooses you.
"Qamar, for example, is an undaunted female character who decides who she will love. But others will be unhappy in love, or will not necessarily find love.”
This brings us right back to how these vivid characters might be faring had the story taken place in 2019. A sequel is not on the cards, although Alharthi jokes that she makes it “a rule not to discuss new work until it is finished”.
But Celestial Bodies is such a compelling novel that these characters live on beyond the final pages of the book.
For now, Alharthi says she hopes that her newfound profile as a writer might mean that her 2016 novel, Bitter Orange, is fully translated into English. An excerpt, also translated by Booth, is already available to read online at Words Without Borders.
The story also heavily features Oman, which is important for Alharthi’s publishers who believe she is the first Omani author to have her work translated into English.
“Literature is the best expression of experience,” she says.
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi is out now
Updated: May 22, 2019 11:39 AM

Omani writer Jokha Alharthi wins Man Booker literature prize

AFP
May 22, 2019 10:21 IST
Updated: May 22, 2019 10:24 IST
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Arabic author Jokha Alharthi (L) and translator Marilyn Booth pose after winning the Man Booker International Prize for the book 'Celestial Bodies' in London on May 21, 2019. | Photo Credit: AFP

The jury said: “Elegantly structured and taut, it tells of Oman's coming-of-age through the prism of one family's losses and loves”
Jokha Alharthi on May 21 became the first Arabic author to win the Man Booker International prize for her novel “Celestial Bodies” which reveals her Omani homeland's post-colonial transformation.
“I am thrilled that a window has been opened to the rich Arabic culture,” Alharthi, 40, told reporters after the ceremony at the Roundhouse in London.
Alharthi is the author of two previous collections of short fiction, a children's book and three novels in Arabic. She studied classical Arabic poetry at Edinburgh University and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat.
“Oman inspired me but I think international readers can relate to the human values in the book -- freedom and love,” she said.

The prestigious 50,000-pound (Over 44 lakh rupees) prize, which celebrates translated fiction from around the world, is divided equally between the author and the translator. Alharthi's translator was U.S. academic Marilyn Booth, who teaches Arabic literature at Oxford University.
The judges said Celestial Bodies was “a richly imagined, engaging and poetic insight into a society in transition and into lives previously obscured”.
Oman's coming-of-age
It 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 is waiting for her beloved who has emigrated to Canada. The three sisters witness Oman's evolution from a traditional, slave-owning society.
“It touches the subject of slavery. I think literature is the best platform to have this dialogue,” Alharthi said.
The jury said: “Elegantly structured and taut, it tells of Oman's coming-of-age through the prism of one family's losses and loves”.
The Guardian said it offers “glimpses into a culture relatively little known in the west” and The National said it signalled “the arrival of a major literary talent”, calling the book “a densely woven, deeply imagined tour de force”.
Jury chair Bettany Hughes said the novel showed “delicate artistry and disturbing aspects of our shared history. The style is a metaphor for the subject, subtly resisting cliches of race, slavery and gender,”
Alharthi was up against five other shortlisted authors: France's Annie Ernaux, Germany's Marion Poschmann, Poland's Olga Tokarczuk, Colombia's Juan Gabriel Vasquez and Chile's Alia Trabucco Zeran.

Man Booker International Prize: Jokha Alharthi is first Arabic winner
22 May 2019

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Jokha Alharthi (l) shared the award with translator Marilyn Booth
Omani author Jokha Alharthi has won this year's Man Booker International Prize - the first Arabic writer to do so.
Her novel Celestial Bodies centres on the lives of three sisters and their families coming to terms with social changes in Oman.
Judges described it as "a richly imagined, engaging and poetic insight".
Alharthi shares the award of £50,000 ($63,000) with her translator, the American academic Marilyn Booth.
"I am thrilled that a window has been opened to the rich Arabic culture," Alharthi told journalists after the ceremony at the Roundhouse in London.
"Oman inspired me but I think international readers can relate to the human values in the book - freedom and love."

The award is also a big achievement for the publishers Sandstone Press, a small company in Dingwall, Scotland, with four full-time staff members and which puts out between 20 and 25 books per year.
A spokesperson from Sandstone, said the win was "extremely exciting" for the team.
"Our editor really championed Celestial Bodies, she saw something special in it," the spokesperson added.
"It's just a beautiful book about families and their loves and their losses. It's fantastic that we are able to see into this world."
Celestial Bodies is set in the village of al-Awafi and tells the stories of three sisters, who witness Oman's cultural evolution from a traditional society in the post-colonial period.
In particular, the story focuses on middle-class Omanis trying to come to terms with major changes to their way of life.
"It touches the subject of slavery. I think literature is the best platform to have this dialogue," said Alharthi, who is the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English. She's also an academic who was educated, in part, at Edinburgh University.
The chair of judges, historian Bettany Hughes, said the novel showed "delicate artistry and disturbing aspects of our shared history".
"The style is a metaphor for the subject, subtly resisting cliches of race, slavery and gender," she added.
Alharthi has previously written two collections of short fiction, a children's book and three novels in Arabic.

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi review – love and loss in Oman
This family saga is the first novel from the Gulf to be shortlisted for the Man Booker International prize
Jane Housham
Thu 2 May 2019 10.30 BST
Last modified on Thu 2 May 2019 18.08 BST

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A wall of the Nizwa fort, Oman. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
T
his is the first novel from the Gulf to be shortlisted for the Man Booker International prize; that it is by an Omani author makes it rarer still.
In an introductory note the translator, Marilyn Booth, sets out the book’s key themes, built around the pressures on three generations of an Omani family as a result of social change.
But it’s harder to make out these themes in the novel itself, perhaps because of the complex structure. The narrative alternates between a third-person viewpoint and the first-person voice of Abdallah, a married businessman haunted by his father’s cruelty. The stories of many others are woven in, making the shape of the book more a tangled skein than a linear progression.
Frequent reference to the family tree that opens the book is needed, but cannot unravel all the bewildering inter-relationships. Slavery was only outlawed in Oman in 1970 and its dark complexities affect the families at the heart of the novel.
While there are some frustrations for the reader to overcome, the glimpses into a culture relatively little known in the west are fascinating.
• Celestial Bodies is published by Sandstone (£8.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

Celestial Bodies review: Jokha Alharti is a distinctive and important new voice to world literature
Literature in translation reviews: Celestial Bodies, The Shape of the Ruins and The Years
Sat, May 18, 2019, 06:00
Michael Cronin

Jokha Alharthi, the first Omani woman to have a novel translated into English

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Celestial Bodies
Jokha Alharti
Translated by Marilyn Booth
Sandstone Press
243pp, £8.99
How women fare in changed circumstances and what they are and are not allowed to remember is a recurring preoccupation in Celestial Bodies by the Omani novelist, Jokha Alharthi.
Oman, a state in the Persian Gulf, bounded by Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen, with a population broadly similar to that of Ireland, has experienced rapid urbanisation and social change largely as a result of the oil bounty for this desert state.
Alharthi tracks the fortunes of a merchant family with a troubled past in the slave trade and concentrates in particular on the lives and destinies of sisters, Mayya, Asma and Khowla. Ranging across three generations with a crowd of voices tracking Oman’s shift from a typical desert dynasty of the village al-Awafi to the urban oasis of the city Muscat, the novel is a beautifully achieved account of lives pulling at the edges of change.
The writing is teasingly elliptical throughout and there is a kind of poetic understatement that draws the reader into the domestic settings and public tribulations of the three sisters. They possess agency and character and in their different ways deal with the logjam of tradition and the uncertain freedoms of expanding worlds. The matrilineal trail that runs from Salima to her daughter Mayya to her grand daughter London is another line of inquiry that puzzles through the lives of women in radically shifting circumstances.
The novel is also told in part through the voice of Abdallah, the husband of Mayya, whose tale of abuse at the hands of his father Sulayman, also picks up on the unspoken atrocities of slavery in the region. Celestial Bodies deftly undermines recurrent stereotypes about Arab language and cultures but most importantly brings a distinctive and important new voice to world literature.

Book review: Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies
First novel from the Gulf to be shortlisted for the Man Booker prize

Published: May 22, 2019 17:48
Guardian

Jokha Al Harthi with translator Marilyn Booth after winning the Man Booker International Prize for the book ‘Celestial Bodies’ in London on Tuesday.
Image Credit: AFP
Also in this package
Omani Jokha Alharthi wins Man Booker literature prize
Celestial Bodies
By Jokha Alharthi, Sandstone, 256 pages, £8.99
Love and loss in Oman
This is the first novel from the Gulf to be shortlisted for the Man Booker International prize. In an introductory note the translator, Marilyn Booth, sets out the book’s key themes, built around the pressures on three generations of an Omani family as a result of social change.
The narrative alternates between a third-person viewpoint and the first-person voice of Abdallah, a married businessman haunted by his father’s cruelty. The stories of many others are woven in, making the shape of the book more a tangled skein than a linear progression.

Frequent reference to the family tree that opens the book is needed, but cannot unravel all the bewildering inter-relationships. Slavery was only outlawed in Oman in 1970 and its dark complexities affect the families at the heart of the novel.

Omani Jokha Alharthi wins Man Booker literature prize
Becomes first Arabic author to win prize for her novel ‘Celestial Bodies’

Published: May 22, 2019 01:28
AFP

Jokha Alharthi poses after winning the Man Booker International Prize for the book 'Celestial Bodies' in London on May 21, 2019.
Image Credit: AFP
London: Jokha Alharthi on Tuesday became the first Arabic author to win the Man Booker International prize for her novel “Celestial Bodies” which reveals her Omani homeland’s post-colonial evolution.
Alharthi, 40, is the author of two previous collections of short fiction, a children’s book and three novels in Arabic.
She studied classical Arabic poetry at Edinburgh University and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat.
The prestigious £50,000 (Dh233,342) prize, which celebrates translated fiction from around the world, is divided equally between the author and translator.
Alharthi’s translator was US academic Marilyn Booth, who teaches Arabic literature at Oxford University.

The judges said Alharthi’s book was “a richly imagined, engaging and poetic insight into a society in transition and into lives previously obscured”.
The book 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 is waiting for her beloved who has emigrated to Canada.
The three sisters witness Oman’s evolution from a traditional, slave-owning society to a complex modernity.
“Elegantly structured and taut, it tells of Oman’s coming-of-age through the prism of one family’s losses and loves,” the organisers said in a statement.
The Guardian said it offers “glimpses into a culture relatively little known in the west”.

Jury chair Bettany Hughes said the novel showed “delicate artistry and disturbing aspects of our shared history”.
“The style is a metaphor for the subject, subtly resisting cliches of race, slavery and gender,” she said.
Alharthi was up against five other shortlisted authors: France’s Annie Ernaux, Germany’s Marion Poschmann, Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk, Colombia’s Juan Gabriel Vasquez and Chile’s Alia Trabucco Zeran.
Here are some reactions from the literary community:

I think it’s wonderful recognition of the excellent writing that’s going on this region. It gives everyone hope that they will not be forgotten, the Gulf region has been recognised and this will give other young writers encouragement. Like when Nagoub Mahfouz became the first Arab to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, it will make a huge difference to output and positivity among the local literary community. Books in translation are also so important as they allow us to tap into world literature and have a better understanding of other cultures and ways of life.
- Isobel Abuhoul, Emirates Lit Fest CEO

I’ve always believed that Arab literature and art is up there competing at a global standard, historically it’s always been that way, but to finally have the first Arab win a Booker prize, that too by the first Omani woman to have her works translated, is huge. I’m sure this will be a gateway to more authors from the region getting translated and these are exciting times if you are a young upcoming Arab writer as it shows you don’t need to be writing for years to get noticed. If you are talented, have a message and a story to tell, the platform is there.
- Alham Bolooki, Emirates Lit Fest director

I’m so thrilled because it sheds a lot of light on the region and what it has to offer, so this is a win for all of us in a sense. On a personal level, I’m part of a collective of writers and it’s just incredible to have that visibility on literature in the region now. The GCC has always been home to storytellers and poets, it’s a big part of our culture and identity. Definitely, without doubt, this will open a lot of doors of opportunity and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for other local writers
- Afra Atiq, Emirati poet

The reality is that there are many great writers in this region but due to the lack of translation it doesn’t get the exposure it deserves. Hopefully this is the beginning and people will begin to take notice of Arab writers. There’s a bit of stigma around Arab writing. People think they are not experienced or talented enough to tackle great subjects and tell them in an interesting way, that’s the perception in the west, but for those who know, this region is a great untapped resource, with proud heritage of storytelling that’s only known here.
- Alex Braun, playright and Dubai and Abu Dhabi lit fest official

It’s fantastic to see Arab literature by Arab women receive such mainstream attention. I try to avoid all sweeping statements about what it means as how would I know? But generally speaking when an Arab female wins a prize writers from the region are more seen and it really is empowering. That’s not to say people aren’t reading Arab literature as they certainly are, but it’s always nice to see when authors from the margins, if you might call them, receive mainstream attention. It’s empowering, you feel more seen and its fantastic for Arab literature and Arab women
- Zeina Hashem Beck, Lebanese author

The novel is a relatively new form in the Arab world, compared to poetry and Arab writers have only recently started to be given the recognition they deserve. Jokha Al Harithy’s award will not only enhance the position of Arab writers globally, particularly Arab women writers, but also draw attention to the beauty and nuance of the Arabic language and the complexity of Arab history. Credit also deservedly goes to the translators, like Marilyn Booth, who have worked tirelessly for years to bring the voices of Arab writers, particularly those of female novelists, to the attention of English language audiences.
- Selma Dabbagh, Palestinian novelist

'Celestial Bodies' shines a light on Omani literature

Jokha Alharthi is the first writer from the Arabian Gulf to be longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. We review her notable work

Oman's rich history is woven into the fabric of Jokha Alharthi's novel 'Celestial Bodies'. Alamy Stock Photo
When Jokha ­Alharthi’s second novel appeared in 2010, it marked the arrival of a major literary talent. Originally titled Sayyidat al-Qamr (Ladies of the Moon), it is a densely woven, deeply imagined tour de force that follows Omani families between the 1880s and the early years of the 21st century. Translated by Marilyn Booth and published quietly in 2018 as Celestial Bodies, the book is suddenly in the spotlight.
It’s one of 13 titles longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, and Alharthi is one of only six Arab authors – the first from the Arabian Gulf – to ever be longlisted for the prize.

'Celestial Bodies' by Jokha Alharthi has been translated by Marilyn Booth. Courtesy Man Booker International Prize
While the novel is historical fiction, it does not follow an easy trajectory from “tradition to modernity” or “local to global”. The book scorns romanticised history and happily-ever-afters. Individual characters are often taunted when they use romance as a way of understanding the world. When Abdallah asks his wife Mayya if she loves him, her retort is: “It’s the Egyptian films, have they eaten up your mind?”
Celestial Bodies never actually gets to the “ever after”. Instead, it ­continually re-­evaluates both present and past. And while the book doesn’t tell us how things turn out, it skilfully builds suspense by creating “Aha!” moments as characters come to better understand their pasts.
The power of history
Every character – woman or man, enslaved or free – finds themselves trapped, in some way, by history. Yet they also grasp at liberation. Mayya asserts herself by naming her daughter “London”, despite the whispers and giggles of her family. Still, this name does not free her daughter from Omani history. Young and privileged, she remains stuck, unable to move on. After her divorce, the narrative asks: “So why did London’s hand remain frozen in place, letting itself be crushed under the weight of the page, until she could no longer turn it?”
Other characters don’t even try to turn the page; instead, they ignore their pasts. Mayya’s sister Khawla loves paperback romances and has an apparently happy marriage. But in middle age, the “wild forest” inside Khawla awakens, ripping through “all the old sheets with which you tried to cover it and choke off all those thorns”.
Characters might try to paper over painful pasts, yet the thorns always find a way in. It is the same with Oman’s history of slavery. The novel’s main families have two originating ancestors: one is Hilal the Merchant, who earned his fortune in illegal weapons and whose son, Suleyman the Merchant, was a slaver; the other is Senghor, a man who is caught outside his village and dragged to a ship. He’s brought to English plantation owners before he is sold in Oman.

Jokha Alharthi is the first author from the Gulf to appear on the Man Booker International Prize shortlist. Courtesy Man Booker International Prize
Characters regularly remind themselves and others that slavery is illegal in Oman, which was one of the last countries to officially abolish it, ending the practice in 1970. Still, the oppression continues to affect both the characters who descended from the enslaved and those who descended from slavers.
Oman's pull
Even heroic episodes can be a trap. Mayya’s bookish sister Asma marries Khalid, an artist who struggles to escape his father’s expectations. Khalid’s father often reminded him: “His great-grandfather Shaykh Mansur bin Nasir was among the cavalry who combated Mutlaq the Wahhabi in his repeated raids on Omanis.
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"He was in the battle where the Omanis held on so fiercely to their swords that their hands were stiff and rigid around them by the time darkness fell. The women soaked the fighters’ hands in water until they softened enough for the swords to drop.”
It is a beautiful image, but a cage for Khalid, who finds freedom while painting horses and living in Cairo. He, too, is drawn back to Oman.
The translation does not coddle the reader who may be afraid of foreign words. Booth embroiders the text with the sound of Arabic wherever possible, maintaining rhythm and even rhyme, as well as the crackle and pop of the book’s humour. Celestial Bodies is not a straightforward book, but readers who can leap nimbly into its stream will certainly find themselves carried away.
The shortlist for the prize will be announced on April 9, with the winner being announced on May 21 in London
Updated: March 28, 2019 02:05 PM