Kindle
$11.99
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Paperback
$14.13
Audio CD
$27.55
Buy new:
$14.13
FREE delivery Saturday, May 4 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
List Price: $16.95 Details

The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Except for books, Amazon will display a List Price if the product was purchased by customers on Amazon or offered by other retailers at or above the List Price in at least the past 90 days. List prices may not necessarily reflect the product's prevailing market price.
Learn more
Save: $2.82 (17%)
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns
FREE delivery Saturday, May 4 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Thursday, May 2. Order within 15 hrs 58 mins
In Stock
$$14.13 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$14.13
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Returns
Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Payment
Secure transaction
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime
FREE delivery Monday, May 6 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
Or fastest delivery Thursday, May 2. Order within 15 hrs 58 mins
Used: Good | Details
Sold by FindAnyBook
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: The book may have minor cosmetic wear like creased spine, cover, scratches, curled corners, folded pages, minor sunburn, minor water damage, minor bent. The book may have some highlights, notes, underlined pages. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included . Safe and Secure Mailer. No Hassle Return.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime.

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you grow your business. Learn more about the program.

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Jokha Alharthi
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Celestial Bodies Paperback – October 8, 2019

by Jokha Alharthi (Author), Marilyn Booth (Translator)
3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 2,472 ratings
See all formats and editions
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$14.13","priceAmount":14.13,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"14","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"13","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"bcJCHI7Q0xX29jW%2Bn63SZExDNL2TOI3bVsa85tN3MghQ3ZO9PhFJQdgXZQC%2BA7NeVOY6dAFF6ZYnboEcJIVI36Vh2%2Baqbj1qijEkUq%2FAsBT4Ylvteqm%2BO%2BfOfWM0a%2FoiHT9Tpeyq2%2BxQAavJruLFAQ%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$6.97","priceAmount":6.97,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"6","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"97","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"bcJCHI7Q0xX29jW%2Bn63SZExDNL2TOI3b%2BsNaAVFXUMWt3Uxl5qbBe29rd2S64UaY4NBTPaJfiXK8v5M%2FkfW0jnFb3oaaKirvHqClMn6rPhk6OqjK8rmXOA8hJSQv6Bfy2e0qEtUCE6ZMCymGxCRAEwTLZJZzOGeDCx0Uf85ff3d3BSx8JwnY2PV5y2f0I%2F4p","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

This winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize and national bestseller is “an innovative reimagining of the family saga . . . Celestial Bodies is itself a treasure house: an intricately calibrated chaos of familial orbits and conjunctions, of the gravitational pull of secrets" (The New York Times Book Review).

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.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Catapult
  4. Publication date
    October 8, 2019
  5. Dimensions
    5.48 x 0.69 x 8.23 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1948226944
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1948226943
  8. See all details
Next page
The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now

Frequently bought together

Celestial Bodies
$14.13
Get it as soon as Saturday, May 4
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Guapa: A Novel
$15.38
Get it as soon as Monday, May 6
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by STARTREKBOOKS and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
+
A Map of Home: A Novel
$22.00
Get it as soon as Saturday, May 4
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Some of these items ship sooner than the others.
Show details Hide details
Choose items to buy together.

From the Publisher

man booker

Kirkus

PW

Editorial Reviews

Review

Winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year in Fiction

"In her novel Celestial Bodies, the Omani author Jokha Alharthi inhabits this liminal space between memory and forgetting: the dark tension between the stories we tell and the stories we know . . . Booth’s translation honors the elliptical rhythms of Arabic and the language’s rich literary heritage. She imbues the book’s numerous poetic extracts with lyricism and devotedly preserves the rhymes and cadences of its proverbs. ('The feet walk fast for the loving heart’s sake, but when you feel no longing, your feet drag and ache.') Yet there is no doubt that this is a contemporary novel, insistent and alive . . . Celestial Bodies is itself a treasure house: an intricately calibrated chaos of familial orbits and conjunctions, of the gravitational pull of secrets." ―Beejay Silcox, The New York Times Book Review

"Bright and illuminating." ―Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"The form’s remarkable adaptability is on brilliant display in Celestial Bodies (Catapult), a searching work of fiction by Jokha Alharthi, an Omani writer and academic . . . Within all the chapters, the stories float like this, lightly tethered to what the French call récit―the moment in which the story is being told, the narrative present. The result is a beautifully wavering, always mobile set of temporalities, the way starlight seems to flicker when we gaze at distant and nearer celestial bodies . . . Indeed, the great pleasure of reading Celestial Bodies is witnessing a novel argue, through the achieved perfection of its form, for a kind of inquiry that only the novel can really conduct." ―James Wood, The New Yorker

"Arab women, therefore, face twin obstacles: the West’s own gender biases, and the reductive narrative of the Arab woman. This is why it was such a victory when the International Booker Prize jury chose an Arab novel―one written by a woman―to receive the award for the first time in the prize’s history. The Omani novelist Jokha al-Harthi’s breathtaking, layered, multigenerational novel Celestial Bodies, which was beautifully translated into English, follows the lives of three sisters from a small village at a time of rapid social and economic change in Oman. The tale is replete with history, poetry, and philosophy, but also slavery, broken marriages, passion, and not-so-secret lovers." ―Kim Gattas, The Atlantic

"Rich, dense . . . The variety of perspectives is effective in offering a window into a country that few Western readers will know intimately . . . Celestial Bodies is strongest in its exploration of how the changes in Oman affect women: within one generation, they are exposed to ideas from abroad and start moving away from cloistered, rural life. But Alharthi . . . pushes past stereotypical narratives of Muslim women defying patriarchy, instead illustrating the difficulties of balancing tradition and newfound freedoms. It’s a tale that perhaps could have been written only in a strange new place itself." ―Naina Bajekal, Time

"A rich, dense web of a novel . . . Alharthi constructs a tapestry of interlocking lives, some seen over the course of decades, others at just a single pungent moment. Rarely have I encountered a work of fiction in which form and idea were so inseparably, and appropriately, fused . . . Marilyn Booth, the translator, has done a wonderful job of conveying a lyricism I can only assume is present in Alharthi’s original." —Ruth Franklin, The New York Review of Books

About the Author

Jokha Alharthi is the first Omani woman to have a novel translated into English, and Celestial Bodies is the first book translated from Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize. She is the author of two previous collections of short fiction, a children’s book, and three novels in Arabic. Fluent in English, she completed a PhD in Classical Arabic Poetry in Edinburgh, and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat. She has been shortlisted for the Sahikh Zayed Award for Young Writers and her short stories have been published in English, German, Italian, Korean, and Serbian.

Marilyn Booth holds the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Chair for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World, Oriental Institute and Magdalen College, Oxford University. In addition to her academic publications, she has translated many works of fiction from the Arabic, most recently The Penguin’s Song and No Road to Paradise, both by Lebanese novelist Hassan Daoud.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Catapult; First Edition (October 8, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1948226944
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1948226943
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.48 x 0.69 x 8.23 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 2,472 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Jokha Alharthi

Jokha Alharthi

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

3.6 out of 5 stars
3.6 out of 5
2,472 global ratings
HARD TO FOLLOW
3 Stars
HARD TO FOLLOW
I won an uncorrected ARC of this book in a Goodreads giveaway from Catapult and was originally drawn to the story based on the fact that it had won the Man Booker Prize. I was also eager to learn of Oman since I had little knowledge of it previously.This was a hard read for me to get through and I actually had to put it down for two weeks and come back to it in order to be able to finish despite it being a rather short book. While it was interesting learning of the different traditions and customs of the generations covered in this book and I liked the stories told, I found it to be very hard to follow.The shifting back and forth to different decades and characters made it hard to keep track of which character I was following and at what time period they were in. It quite honestly gave me a literal headache trying to keep it all straight and instead of feeling enjoyment or even enlightenment through what I was reading I was mostly left frustrated. The transitions between characters and time were haphazard and without direction and even the dialogue between characters was at times difficult to follow.I feel that this could be a beautiful story if the formatting was changed to allow for easier reading and a smoother flow.
Hide
Thank you for your feedback
Sorry, there was an error
Sorry we couldn't load the review

Top reviews from the United States

TG
4.0 out of 5 stars Hard to follow
Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2020
Verified Purchase
The book is written by an Omani author about a somewhat dysfunctional, extensive family unit in Oman. Each chapter is from a different character's viewpoint. As I write this, I remember very little dialogue. It seemed well written but I found it hard to follow the relationships. I found some of them distasteful but reading is not always supposed to be pleasurable. The description of the culture was informative if it is accurate. I found myself feeling strong cultural bias against its values and expectations. I like historical fiction and I did learn something from the book but, I was not able to hold how the characters fit together.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
John P. Jones III
5.0 out of 5 stars “Al-Zahra”…
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2021
Verified Purchase
Khawla is one of three sisters who discovers that the life-defining story about souls that are split apart and are forever searching restlessly for completion would find rest only when they were reunited did not come from “The Dove’s Necklace” but from the lesser known subject book. May that perfect fit still be found.

Jokha Alharthi won the Booker International Prize in 2019 for this novel, the first Arab author to be awarded the prize. In her acceptance speech she stressed the universal nature of some of her themes. True enough. But I also feel that this excellent novel is deeply rooted in the particular circumstances of Oman, which further enhanced my reading enjoyment.

The novel was smoothly translated from Arabic into English by Mary Booth. I had read another work that Booth had translated: Rajaa Al Sanea’s “The Girls of Riyadh.”

The core of Alharthi’s novel is three generations of one Omani family. In terms of historical development however, those three generations spanned 10 generations or more in many other countries. The key date is 1970. In that year Sultan Qaboos overthrew his father, Sultan Said bin Taimur, who was “feudal, reactionary and isolationist,” per Wikipedia. Schooling, health care, and many other aspects of the country were stuck in the equivalent of the European Middle Ages. Most Omanis were illiterate, including almost all the women. One of Qaboos first acts was to outlaw slavery, one of the very last countries in the world to do so. (I personally continue to believe that there are many forms of slavery that continue to exist in numerous countries of the world.) And Qaboos, who would provide an enlightened rule for half a century, until his death in 2020, largely brought the country into the modern world, with good schooling, education, and a reasonable social safety net.

The ramifications of the not-so-distant past of slavery is a key aspect of Alharthi’s novel. In 1926 the 15-year old slave, Ankabuta, would give birth to Zafira, who is a central character in this novel, slave, child-care minder, and yes, concubine. Zafira’s son, Sanjar, though nominally “free” after 1970, flees the on-going social discrimination, and goes to Kuwait, where he works, well, much as a slave, in the souks. Hum.

Djinns are omnipresent in the lives of this family and the residents of the village of Al-Awafi. Homage and care must always be taken with them. And how could an uprooted basil bush lead to a death? Alharthi is an excellent story teller, backing and filling the story among the characters, throwing out a hint here and there, and ultimately telling you the answer. There is a “desert and the sown,” to use Gertrude Bell’s formulation, to life in Oman. Awafi is a coastal agricultural village, with irrigation practices using the falaj system that dated back millennia. In fact, Azzan’s bride, Salima, bears the “falaj” nickname, earned under some unique circumstances. Azzan can leave his home in the evening to visit the nearby Bedouin encampment for a bit of camaraderie, and use the excursion to obtain a bit more… it is the Moon, you understand, and other bewitching celestial bodies. Or is it djinns?

Much of the novel centers on the three daughters of Azzan and Salima: Mayya, “the seamstress,” bookish Asma, and Khawla, noted for her vanities and mirrors. London (imagine the scandal of naming your daughter after a city! Hum!), who is the daughter of Mayya and Abdullah, also has a prominent role. She will become a doctor, driving her BMW to Muscat to work. Each of the women find their own orbits in the cosmos that is modern-day Oman.

Oman was once a flake of my life. My family and I spent six days there over the Winter school holidays of 1997. Three of those six days were spent camping, in splendid isolation, 50 km south of Muscat, on the beach. I remember reading a guide to Oman before going that cautioned Arabs from the other countries of Al Jazeera (as well as the expats who had adopted the local driving customs) that in Oman they really must obey the speed limit… or there were consequences. Imagine that. A country different. We also circled around to the desert side, and drove high onto Jebel Akhtar (which is never translated by Booth, but means “Green Mountain”). There was an enormous cedar tree that three people could not link their outstretched arms around its trunk. I would have been more careful if I had known about all the land mines and bombs dropped by the British in the 1950’s, as Alharthi describes.

Alharthi has written a truly great novel on Oman and its people and history. 6-stars. I’ll conclude with a plug for another great Arab writer still languishing in obscurity: Yousef Al-Mohaimeed. His “Where Pigeons Don’t Fly,” is an incisive portrait of modern-day Riyadh and his “Munira’s Bottle” is also excellent. Hear that, Mr. Booker!
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Diana Acconcia
3.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to read at times
Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2019
Verified Purchase
This book takes us to an unusual setting: a village in Oman on the margins of the capital Muscat. It tells the story of a family and a number of other characters around it, from after the second world war to more or less the 2000s. The numerous characters are powerfully sketched and the story of the transition from a world that feels ancient to modernity is compelling. However, the language full of images and religious formulas, the frequent dreams and hallucinations of the character that tells half of the story and most of all the sheer number of characters that are mentioned through the chapter (often very passingly, and only many chapters after their story is told so the reference becomes clear) made this book a bit of an ordeal for me. The book ends when it has more or less told the story of all characters, but there is no real ending, although this is normal these days, and I failed to grasp how some of the characters relate to the main story. I would have been most grateful to have a presentation of the characters or a family tree to look up at the beginning of the book, to help the novices of Arab literature to navigate the story.
63 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
RHFowler
2.0 out of 5 stars Great idea and setting but don't expect to learn much
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2020
Verified Purchase
Once again, I am completely perplexed about the Booker/Man Booker International Prizes. What exactly are they rewarding? I periodically read one of the winners with high hopes, especially since so many of them are set in other parts of the world, but once again I am disappointed. Having spent many years in the Middle East and having visited Oman twice, I was so looking forward to the insight I hoped I'd get from this book. There were interesting elements, such as how slavery played out in that part of the world and the “conjure woman” practices, but I would have appreciated a more traditionally constructed story that included these topics. Instead, I got a rambling portrait of the lives of three generations of a roughly middle-class family, their slaves, and associates. It jumped back and forth in time with no rhyme or reason. There was a thin story line that loosely held everything together, but there were so many digressions that it was easy to forget about it. The writing style had so much variance that sections of the book could have been written by different people. There were philosophical ramblings that were often quite beautiful, interesting historical lessons, snippets of poetry, and everyday dialog between siblings. There were also the interspersed stream-of-consciousness musings by one character as he soared above it all on an airplane. These musings became more and more strange, with the last chapter being either a hallucination or dream. As a last chapter, it did absolutely nothing to tie up the story. I think the author didn’t know how to wrap it up – either that, or she was following a non-Western approach to storytelling that didn’t require any sort of resolution. If she was trying to showcase the culture and daily life of her country for the benefit of those who had no knowledge of it, the resulting mishmash may not help many to gain any understanding.
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Rocky Hobbs
3.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Written
Reviewed in Canada on July 31, 2019
Verified Purchase
But SO confusing!!! This is a book to sit down and read cover to cover so you don't lose track of who is who, when. It needs total concentration which, perhaps, I didn't have at the time. Having said that, some of the passages are so beautiful it takes your breath away.
Report
Andrea Villa
3.0 out of 5 stars Missing something
Reviewed in Italy on October 29, 2019
Verified Purchase
Not bad, but I thought it was much better. I discovered new Omani traditions, and How they changed in 3 generations
Report
diego28036
4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book
Reviewed in Spain on August 28, 2019
Verified Purchase
Very good book to have an approach to Oman
Report
Client d'Amazon
2.0 out of 5 stars Pas passionnant pour tous
Reviewed in France on September 4, 2019
Verified Purchase
Pas reussi a le terminer. Trop lent, trop de descriptions... Pas l'habitudes de ce genre de livre ce qui explique peut etre ce manque d'enthousiasme. Par contre, la traduction en anglais est excellente.
Report
Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Comment on the book, not the content
Reviewed in India on July 21, 2019
Verified Purchase
Pathetic pages.. its like as in very cheap weeklies.. so poor quality.. I never expected a booker winning novel in such cheap pages.. one reading.. the pages are already like worn out..
Report