(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) Muscat- A shot in the arm for budding writers in the sultanate, an Omani author has been shortlisted for one of the biggest literary fiction awards – the Man Booker International Prize for 2019.
Jokha Alharthi's bookCelestial Bodies, t
ranslated from the original Omani novelSayyidat al-Qamar
, is among the 13 books longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.
Jokha is the author of two previous collections of short fiction, a children's book, and three novels in Arabic and currently teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat.
"I am absolutely thrilled thatCelestial Bodies
has been longlisted for the Man Booker international Prize. It is a great honour and an opportunity for Omani literature to be read and appreciated by a wider audience,' said Jokha.
Praising the book, the Man Booker International Prize judges stated, 'A richly imagined, engaging and poetic insight into a society in transition and into lives previously obscured.'
Celestial Bodies is translated by Professor Marilyn Booth of the Oriental Institute and Magdalen College, Oxford University.
According to the publisher Sandstone Press,Celestial Bodies
is a coiled spring of a novel, telling of Oman's coming-of-age through the prism of one family's losses and loves.
The novel explores the lives of three sisters as they witness Oman slowly redefining itself from a traditional society to its complex present state, where social mores parley with aspiration, technology, and oil money.sa
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