Jokha Alharthi

Celestial Bodies

In the village of al-Awafi in Oman live three sisters. Mayya marries after a heartbreak. Asma marries from a sense of duty. Khawla rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. Celestial Bodies is the story of the history and people of modern Oman told through one family's losses and loves.

fasyareadkive

“There I was holding tight to the pole with both hands, and she was shouting at me, Ya waylik! If I hear even one little screech you'll be sorry! Every woman brings babies out of her body, and what a scandal you are then, if you so much as whimper! A scandal, and you the daughter of the Shaykh! I didn't say one word, I didn't complain. Anyway all I could've said was, My Lord my Lord my Lord! And to think that these days, women have their babies lying flat on their backs, and the men can hear their screams from the other end of the hospital. There's no longer any shame in the world, ayy wAllahi!”

The Bedouin woman tells the bride to use plenty of water for washing, and pile lots of kohl onto her eyelids, and to always pay attention to what there is to eat and drink.

Yes, said Mayya, her face as serious as ever and her voice low. And that I should laugh whenever he laughs, and if there are any tears rolling down his cheeks, there had better be some tears rolling down mine. I must be content with what. ever makes him happy and-

What's wrong with you, Mayya? Khawla broke in. The nomad woman didn't say all that. She just meant you'd feel happy as long as he's happy and sad when he is sad.

altlovesbooks

This book never came together for me. It follows several generations of a family in Oman, but does so nonsequentially. The chapters each take the point of view of a different family member throughout the saga, but they could be anywhere from early on to fairly late in the family's timeline. Because of this, I never really found myself connecting with any of the characters in any real meaningful way. Compounding this for me is that there's quite a bit of vitriol and animosity in this family, either towards each other, towards other neighbors/people, or towards themselves, and this made it hard to actually find someone to like in the bunch of kind of vaguely unlikeable people. 

The writing style was great though, and I feel like the author really had a good story here, it just wasn't my thing.

The first Arabic-language winner of the Man Booker International Prize, Celestial Bodies is a vivid and elegant tale of a family and a nation across decades. In the village of al-Awafi, in Oman, two families are joined by marriage: Mayya, the eldest of three sisters, marries Abdallah, son of a wealthy merchant, after suffering her first heartbreak. Abdallah’s passionate love for his wife goes unrequited; she regards him with a mixture of tolerance and mild amusement. Yet he cannot contend solely with the cares and concerns of a husband and father, haunted as he is by the mysterious death of his mother and vivid recollections of his megalomaniacal father. The couple is orbited by an intricate constellation of individuals, connected by blood, by proximity, by deeply rooted social edifices. Those in their immediate families include Mayya’s sisters — Asma, who aspires to a different kind of life and marriage, and Khawla, who chooses to refuse all offers and await a reunion with the man she loves, who has emigrated to Canada. The three women, their families, their loves, and their losses unspool delicately against a backdrop of a rapidly changing Oman, a country evolving from a traditional, slave-owning society into its complex present. The first ever novel originally written in Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize, and the first book by a female Omani author to be translated into English, Celestial Bodies is an exquisite literary creation that marks the arrival of a major international talent.

Félix

Celestial Bodies turned out to be a delightful surprise. With each page, a piece of the puzzle is set in a wonderful tale of three sisters and their tribe during Nahda - the Omani Renaissance. Jokha Alharthi wrote it with so much color that you can feel the characters, the relationships, thoughts, and feelings - wider also the essence of the culture, the changes - the contrasts between the past and the new in hundreds of different subtle shades. 

I’ll admit that I struggled the first dozen of pages - until I got in the mood for the somewhat particular way of telling a story. Bit by bit, while getting more comfortable and attached to the characters (thanks to the intimate way of telling the story, without ever mincing the matter of the protagonists' thoughts and feelings), mundane and darker mysteries become uncovered as the shadow is lifted little by little.

Surely the style of the novel isn’t for everyone - it isn't what many readers attribute to it. It isn't a thriller following a hero in an exotic setting. It isn't an anthropological essay about the Middle East. It isn't a cynical comedy or a latent ethnocentric report about a seemingly primitive tribe. And for sure it isn't written like a 1001 nights telenovela love story or the report of ethnographical report like Seven Pillars of Wisdom, crafted for a western - foreign audience.

It is something own - with suspense, humor, wisdom and drama. Its substance is lyric, yet ethnographic, the latter thus lacking the bluntness of the social scientist. It is a homage without being romanticizing. 



If you never heard about Oman or Arab tribal societies, relating to the development and the subtle details will highly likely be less entertaining. Understanding the context will also be way more challenging. The reason is that Jokha Alharthi refrained to fill her novel with explanations of the context, and she limits herself to the absolute essential necessary knowledge to understand some peculiar aspects of Oman's modern history. This way, "Celestial bodies" enables you to experience it through the eyes and thoughts of the characters, with only the barest guidance by the narrator. Keep in mind, the book was only translated to English and published internationally 8 years after the original release. It's not supposed to be a guidebook.

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.

Jacob Edwards

Absolutely no bloomin clue what was happening in the book. I don't know if that's because I was balancing uni work at the same time or I'm just a blundering nincompoop, but either way I struggled thanks to all the jumps in time, and wouldn't have gotten anywhere without referring back to the family tree at the start of the book every 5 seconds. It's a shame because there's some beauty in the simplicity of the language and I feel like the book was trying to tell me something of the Omanian culture and particularly the women within it, but I just couldn't focus at all. 

Lulu Bonning

Thank goodness for the family tree image at the front, I would have been beyond lost without it!! Beautiful character development and a captivating look at 20th century Oman.

Celestial Bodies

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