Why am I passionate about this?
Like most writers, Iām intoxicated by stories, and when I first learned about the all-but-unknown country of Omanāonce a major maritime power in the Indian Oceanāand its involvement in the East African slave trade, I was hungry to discover more. That āmoreā soon catapulted me into an extraordinary world filled with romance, beauty, violence, cruelty, and larger-than-life characters I had never heard of before. I was eager to share that world with others and so wrote this book. I am also the author of two other books about the Middle East and am deeply interested in writing about the regionās people, history, and culture, rather than its politics.
Christiane's book list on the intriguing country of Oman
Why did Christiane love this book?
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 Omanās historyāits slave trade, its maritime prowess, its close-knit village life, its rapid modern developmentāwhile 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 Alharthiās novel brought to life. Time and memory, religion and magic, poetry and proverbsāall swirl hypnotically together in this book, brilliantly translated by Marilyn Booth.
1 author picked Celestial Bodies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
This winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize and national bestseller is āan 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 threeā¦