My favorite books about the intriguing country of Oman

In this lyrical novel, winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize (the first novel in Arabic to do so), the Omani writer Altharthi captures the rich complexity of a country caught between the past and the future.

Her characters embody various aspects of Oman’s history—its slave trade, its maritime prowess, its close-knit village life, its rapid modern development—while at the same time debunking Western stereotypes about Arab women, society, and culture.

I visited Oman in early 2023 and everywhere I went, I saw Alharthi’s novel brought to life. Time and memory, religion and magic, poetry and proverbs—all swirl hypnotically together in this book, brilliantly translated by Marilyn Booth. 

In 1955 famed travel writer Jan Morris (then James) accompanied Sultan Said bin Taimur on the first crossing of Oman by motorcar.

They start in the southern region of Dhofar, travel north through desert and mountains, and end in the capital of Muscat. The Oman that Morris describes—one of powerful tribes and enslaved Africans—is no more, and his descriptions are at times tinged with racism.

Nonetheless, they are extraordinary: “…there was a loud insistent blare of the Sultan’s horn. The trucks leapt away like dogs from the leash…” This book made me yearn for the romance (but not the cruelties) of that bygone era while also bringing into focus the extraordinary changes that occurred under Taimur’s successor, Sultan Qaboos, who successfully brought Oman into the modern era. 

In this scholarly yet quite readable deep dive into Oman’s history, Wilkinson, an Oxford professor and former oil executive, explores the country’s two traditions: its closed, isolated, tribal interior, which until the 1950s was governed by an elected Iman of Ibadi Islam; and its more secular, multiethnic coastal region, which operated as a major maritime power for over 1,000 years.

I was especially interested to learn about the disastrous effects of Western interference in the region—which still reverberate today—and rival oil companies’ battles with traditional Omani leaders to gain control of the country’s oil reserves. 

In 1979 anthropologist Eickelman, together with her husband and 19-month-old daughter, took up residency in Hamra, a small village on the edge of the Jabal al-Akhdar mountains in Oman’s interior.

Here she befriended the village women, witnessed their daily lives and traditions, and learned about how they were coping with the modernization rapidly overtaking their society. The women she describes are self-confident, reserved, thoughtful, and polite—much like the women I met while traveling in Oman.

Eickelman’s book is a valuable record of a disappearing world.

In this, one of the few general history books about modern Oman, Jones and Ridout give a comprehensive overview of the country’s last two centuries.

Though scholarly and somewhat dry in tone, it provides solid background information on the country’s politics, economy, religion, and culture. I found the sections on Ibadism (the branch of Islam practiced in Oman and almost nowhere else), Dhofar (where a rebellion occurred in 1963–1976), and Sultan Qaboos, who ruled the country for fifty years (1970–2020), to be especially helpful for understanding Oman.