Celestial Bodies (Alharthi) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—July 1978
• Where—Oman
• Education—Ph.D., University of Edinburgh
• Awards—Man Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in Al Khoudh, Oman


Jokha Alharthi, an Omani writer and academic, is the 2019 recipient of the Man Booker International Prize for her novel, Celestial Bodies.

Alharthi was born and educated primarily in Oman. She traveled to the U.K. where she earned her doctorate in classical Arabic literature from Edinburgh University. Currently, she is an associate professor in the Arabic department at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman.

Alharthi has published three collections of short stories, three children's books, and three novels: Manamat, Sayyidat el-Qamar (Celestial Bodies), and Narinjah (Bitter Orange). She has also authored academic works.

The novel, Sayyidat el-Qamar, translated into English by Marilyn Booth and retitled Celestial Bodies, was published in the UK in 2018 and the US in 2019. The novel was the first work by an Arabic-language writer to be awarded the Man Booker International Prize (2019), and the first novel by an Omani woman to appear in English translation. 

In addition to English, Sayyidat el-Qamar (Celestial Bodies) has been translated into the following 20 languages: Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Malayalam, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese (also, Brazilian Portuguese), Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/10/20.)