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Book Reviewed by:
Dean Muscat
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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.
To Come.
Celestial Bodies is a novel that is perhaps greater than the sum of its parts. Alharthi weaves it like a tapestry—a curious patch here, a perfunctory detail there. It's when you pull out to look at the creation in its entirety that you can truly appreciate its majesty. Once you get into the rhythm of the author's see-sawing, non-chronological storytelling, you'll realize that all mysteries will be unraveled in due course, always satisfyingly and often to startling effect...continued
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(Reviewed by Dean Muscat).
Bettany Hughes, chair of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize
A book to win over the head and the heart in equal measure...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.
Throughout Celestial Bodies there are a smattering of references to zār exorcisms, but little detail is given on what these ceremonies actually are. What becomes apparent, though, is that many al-Awafi villagers look forward to these gatherings.
For one character in the book, these exorcisms become a source of entertainment which she anticipates more eagerly than a village wedding: "Those endless ceremonies intoxicated her, everything from the grilled meat and the drinking to the heavy and incessant pounding of the drums, until the ecstasy of it all lifted her outside of herself, beyond consciousness and into one sort of trance or another. In such a state she might walk across live coals or lie beneath horses' hooves or roll in ...
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