Omani author gets a shot at the largest literary prize in the globe

Jokha Alharthi’s book Celestial Bodies, t
ranslated from the original Omani novel Sayyidat al-Qamar
, is amongst the 13 books longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.

Jokha is the author of two prior collections of brief fiction, a children’s book, and 3 novels in Arabic and at present teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat. 

“I am completely thrilled that Celestial Bodies 
has been longlisted for the Man Booker international Prize. It is a fantastic honour and an chance for Omani literature to be study and appreciated by a wider audience,” stated Jokha.

Praising the book, the Man Booker International Prize judges stated, “A richly imagined, engaging and poetic insight into a society in transition and into lives previously obscured.”

Celestial Bodies is translated by Professor Marilyn Booth of the Oriental Institute and Magdalen College, Oxford University.

According to the publisher Sandstone Press, Celestial Bodies 
is a coiled spring of a novel, telling of Oman’s coming-of-age via the prism of a single family’s losses and loves.

The novel explores the lives of 3 sisters as they witness Oman gradually redefining itself from a conventional society to its complicated present state, exactly where social mores parley with aspiration, technologies, and oil money.sa

Information Source: Muscat Daily