Celestial Bodies
2010 novel by Jokha Alharthi
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Celestial Bodies (Arabic: سيدات القمر, romanized: Sayyidat al-Qamar, lit. 'Ladies of the Moon') is a 2010 novel by Omani author Jokha Alharthi. The novel follows the lives of three sisters and their unhappy marriages in al-Awafi, Oman.[1][2]
First English edition | |
| Author | Jokha Alharthi |
|---|---|
| Original title | سيدات القمر |
| Translator | Marilyn Booth |
| Language | Arabic |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Published | |
| Publisher |
|
| Media type | Print, digital |
| Pages | 243 |
| Awards | International Booker Prize |
| ISBN | 1912240165 (Sandstone Press) |
The novel has been translated into over 20 languages[3] and marks the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English,[4] as well as the first Omani novel to be translated to Italian.[5] The original novel won the Best Omani Novel Award in 2010[6] and was longlisted for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the 'Young Author' category in 2011.[7] In 2019, the English translation was awarded the International Booker Prize, with Alharthi and translator Marilyn Booth equally sharing the £50,000 prize.[8] Celestial Bodies is also the first novel to be translated from Arabic to win the prize.[4]
Reception
Kirkus Reviews described Celestial Bodies as "a richly layered, ambitious work that teems with human struggles and contradictions, providing fascinating insight into Omani history and society",[9] while Publishers Weekly expressed that 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."[10]
The New Yorker stated that Alharthi "gives each chapter, in loose rotation, to the voice of a single character, and so makes contemporary female interiority crucial to her book while accommodating a variety of very different world views",[11] while The Irish Times commented that the novel "deftly undermines recurrent stereotypes about Arab language and cultures but most importantly brings a distinctive and important new voice to world literature."[12]