Celestial Bodies, Jokha Alharthi’s second novel, used four generations of a family in the Gulf state of Oman to gauge breakneck social transformations after the discovery of oil in the 1960s. Published in Arabic in 2010 (a chapter first appeared in English in Banipal magazine the following year), Celestial Bodies won the Omani writer and her translator Marilyn Booth the 2019 International Booker prize. Through the vexed marriages of three sisters related to a slave trader, it explored liberty, patriarchy, and social control over both women and men. It included intriguing glimmers of Omani history, from Bedouin freedoms and anti-colonial insurgence to Indian Ocean trade and modern enslavement – outlawed only in 1970.
Bitter Orange Tree, Alharthi’s third novel, is her second to appear in English and is also translated by Booth. Aided by Booth’s deft touch, some parts affirm the author’s talent for lyrical shifts between past and present, memory and folklore, oneiric surrealism and grimy realism. Yet structural flaws and an overambitious global reach make for a patchy read.
