Jokha Alharthi - Böcker

The new novel from the first Arabic-language winner of the Booker International Prize.In their small, mountainside village, Ghazaala and Asiya love each other like sisters, until tragedy strikes, and Asiya is forced into exile. Ghazaala is haunted by Asiya’s absence; a wound that never quite heals.When Ghazaala falls in love with a handsome violinist, everything changes. In Muscat, she tries desperately to balance university and the demands of a new wife. Then she meets Harir, whose life, unbeknownst to Ghaazala, has also been changed by Asiya and the mystery of her fate.Silken Gazelles is a tribute to the power of friendship and the strength of women, intertwining love and loss with deft, beautiful prose.'A “remarkable” writer who has “constructed her own novelistic form”' The New Yorker

The new novel from the first Arabic-language winner of the Booker International Prize.In their small, mountainside village, Ghazaala and Asiya love each other like sisters, until tragedy strikes, and Asiya is forced into exile. Ghazaala is haunted by Asiya’s absence; a wound that never quite heals.When Ghazaala falls in love with a handsome violinist, everything changes. In Muscat, she tries desperately to balance university and the demands of a new wife. Then she meets Harir, whose life, unbeknownst to Ghaazala, has also been changed by Asiya and the mystery of her fate.Silken Gazelles is a tribute to the power of friendship and the strength of women, intertwining love and loss with deft, beautiful prose.'A “remarkable” writer who has “constructed her own novelistic form”' The New YorkerPraise for Silken Gazelles'A lush, shimmering portrait of a small community in the mountains of Oman, filled with women who love and care for one another, who fight for their dreams, and whose desire for independence and passion charts their course through the world far from their village . . . This book is transcendent’ – Susan Straight, author of Mecca and In the Country of Women ‘Through a touching, intricate narrative, Alharthi centres women’s relationships and inspects their elastic but fragile nature’ – Los Angeles Review of Books‘A haunting love story’ - Booklist‘ International Booker Prize winner Alharthi’s eloquent latest . . . [is] a worthy entry into the pantheon of stories about female friendship’ – Publishers Weekly‘Alharthi mines rich material with her details of Omani history . . . A book about searching for love – both parental and romantic – and reckoning with the past’ – Kirkus Reviews

'Celestial Bodies' is set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, where we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present.

Translated by Marilyn BoothShortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction 2023Longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary AwardAn extraordinary novel from a Man Booker International Prize-winning author that follows one young Omani woman as she builds a life for herself in Britain and reflects on the relationships that have made her from a “remarkable” writer who has “constructed her own novelistic form” (James Wood, The New Yorker).‘Alharthi makes lyrical shifts between past and present, memory and folklore, oneiric surrealism and grimy realism.’ Guardian[A] stirring tale of a woman who battles every social and religious constraint. The juxtaposition with the narrator’s reflections on modern life and the speed of change is brilliantly judged in Marilyn Booth’s agile translation from Arabic.’ The ObserverZuhour, an Omani student at a British university, is caught between the past and the present. As she attempts to form friendships and assimilate in Britain, she can’t help but ruminate on the relationships that have been central to her life. Most prominent is her strong emotional bond with Bint Aamir, a woman she always thought of as her grandmother, who passed away just after Zuhour left the Arabian Peninsula.  As the historical narrative of Bint Aamir’s challenged circumstances unfurls in captivating fragments, so too does Zuhour’s isolated and unfulfilled present, one narrative segueing into another as time slips, and dreams mingle with memories.  The eagerly awaited new novel by the winner of the Man Booker International Prize, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish.

Jokha Alharthi re-appraises the relationship between love, poetry and Arab society in the 8th to 11th centuries. She avoids familiar clichés about the purity of love in ‘Udhri poetry – broadly speaking, an Arabic counterpart to the western medieval concept of unconsummated courtly love – and instead questions the traditional much-vaunted emphasis on chastity and the assumption that this poetry omits any concept of the body. Alharthi focuses on the key differences between what the poetry itself says and the views of later sources about ‘Udhri poets and their works. She also documents how the representation of the beloved in the ‘Udhri ghazal was influenced by pre-Islamic poetry, showing how this tradition developed with a series of overlapping historical layers. And she breaks new ground by examining how this poetry treats not only the body of the beloved but also that of her lover, the poet himself.

Radically re-interprets the nature of medieval Arabic love poetry in the classical ageChallenges the stereotypical idea about the absence of the body in 'Udhri love poetryInvestigates the 'Udhri tradition through close readings of the classical 10th-century Arabic sources including anthologies such as the Kitab al-AghaniContributes to literary studies on the representations of the bodyIncludes close readings of difficult literary texts in classical Arabic including the work of 'Urwah b. Hizam, Majnun Layla, Qays b. Dharih, Jamil Buthaynah and Kuthayyir 'AzzahJokha Alharthi re-appraises the relationship between love, poetry and Arab society in the 8th to 11th centuries. She avoids familiar clich s about the purity of love in 'Udhri poetry broadly speaking, an Arabic counterpart to the western medieval concept of unconsummated courtly love and instead questions the traditional much-vaunted emphasis on chastity and the assumption that this poetry omits any concept of the body.Alharthi focuses on the key differences between what the poetry itself says and the views of later sources about 'Udhri poets and their works. She also documents how the representation of the beloved in the 'Udhri ghazal was influenced by pre-Islamic poetry, showing how this tradition developed with a series of overlapping historical layers. And she breaks new ground by examining how this poetry treats not only the body of the beloved but also that of her lover, the poet himself.