 First English edition | |
| Author | Jokha Alharthi |
|---|---|
| Original title | سيدات القمر |
| Translator | Marilyn Booth |
| Language | Arabic |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Published | |
| Publisher |
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| Media type | Print, digital |
| Pages | 243 |
| Awards | International Booker Prize |
| ISBN | 1912240165 (Sandstone Press) |
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.
The novel has been translated into over 20 languages and marks the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English, as well as the first Omani novel to be translated to Italian. The original novel won the Best Omani Novel Award in 2010 and was longlisted for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the 'Young Author' category in 2011. In 2019, the English translation was awarded the International Booker Prize, with Alharthi and translator Marilyn Booth equally sharing the £50,000 prize. Celestial Bodies is also the first novel to be translated from Arabic to win the prize.
Reception
Celestial Bodies has received international praise from critics. The review aggregator website Book Marks reported an overall "Positive" rating by critics for the novel, based on 11 reviews: 5 "Rave" reviews, 4 "Positive" reviews, and 2 "Mixed" reviews.
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", 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."
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", 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."
References
- Wood, James (2019-10-07). "An Omani Novel Exposes Marriage and Its Miseries". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
- Cronin, Michael. "Celestial Bodies review: Jokha Alharti is a distinctive and important new voice to world literature". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
- Bedirian, Razmig (2020-02-08). "Jokha Alharthi struggled to get prize-winning 'Celestial Bodies' published in English". The National. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
- ^ Silcox, Beejay (2019-10-21). "The First Arabic Novel to Win the International Booker Prize". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
- "'Celestial Bodies' becomes first Omani novel to get Italian translation". Muscat Daily. 2022-10-25. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
- "Man Booker International Prize 2019 winner announced". The Booker Prizes. 2019-05-31. Archived from the original on 2020-10-30.
- "Overshadowed Zayed Book Award Announces Longlist in 'Young Author' Category". ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY. 2011-12-14. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
- Edemariam, Aida (2019-07-08). "Jokha Alharthi: 'A lot of women are really strong, even though they are slaves'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
- "Book Marks reviews of Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, trans. by Marilyn Booth". Book Marks. Retrieved 2023-06-04.
- "Celestial Bodies". Kirkus Reviews. 2019-07-27.
- "Celestial Bodies". Publishers Weekly. 2019-07-31.
- "An Omani Novel Exposes Marriage and Its Miseries". The New Yorker. 2019-10-07.
- "Celestial Bodies review: Jokha Alharti is a distinctive and important new voice to world literature". The Irish Times. 2019-05-18.
| International Booker Prize winners | |
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| 2005–2016 |
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| 2016–present |
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