Celestial Bodies

Jokha Alharthi · b. 1978 · Oman

Originally Sayyidat al-Qamar (Arabic) · translated by Marilyn Booth

Why it matters

Three sisters in an Omani village navigate marriage, loss, and a society transforming from slaveholding tradition into oil-age modernity, the story circling between more than a dozen narrators rather than marching forward. The first Arabic-language novel to win the International Booker Prize.

At a glance

Nonlinear structure with a large cast of shifting narrators requires close tracking of who is speaking.