Celestial Bodies (Alharthi) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[A]n innovative reimagining of the family saga. Alharthi avoids the languid ease of chronology in favor of dozens of taut character studies, often no more than a page or two…. These vignettes are sharp-eyed, sharp-edged and carefully deployed in a multigenerational jigsaw that’s as evasive as it is evocative…. [T]his is a contemporary novel, insistent and alive… a treasure house.
Beejay Silcox - New York Times Book Review


The glimpses into a culture relatively little known in the West are fascinating.
Jane Housham - Guardian (UK)


A book to win over the head and the heart in equal measure . . . Its delicate artistry draws us into a richly imagined community — opening out to tackle profound questions of time and mortality and disturbing aspects of our shared history.… Celestial Bodies evokes the forces that constrain us and those that set us free.
Bettany Hughes, chair - 2019 Man Booker International Prize


The form’s remarkable adaptability is on brilliant display…. Celestial Bodies tells the subtle and quietly anguished story of several unhappy marriages.… Yet one of the book’s signal triumphs is that Alharthi has constructed her own novelistic form…. The novel moves back and forth between the generations very flexibly, often in the course of a single page or even paragraph, owing to Alharthi’s deft management of time shifts.… The leaps and swerves seem closer to poetry or fable or song than to the novel… at once intimate and historical.
James Wood - New Yorker


[B]reathtaking… Celestial Bodies… follows the lives of three sisters from a small village at a time of rapid social and economic change in Oman. The tale is replete with history, poetry, and philosophy, but also slavery, broken marriages, passion, and not-so-secret lovers.
Kim Gattas - Atlantic


(Starred review) Alharthi throws the reader into the midst of a tangled family drama…. The novel rewards readers willing to assemble the pieces of Alharthi’s puzzle into a whole, and is all the more satisfying for the complexity of its tale.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Readers will come to this novel… and will leave with a sense of original storytelling, rich characterization, and transparently bright language, expertly translated. Highly recommended.
Library Journal


(Starred review) Althari’s unique structure demands vigilant participation as it is more jigsaw puzzle than linear narrative…. Pieced together, a robust village emerges, of alliances and betrayals, survival and murder, surrender and escape. Patient readers will be seductively, magnificently rewarded.
Booklist


(Starred review) [A] sweeping story of generational and societal change…. A richly layered, ambitious work that teems with human struggles and contradictions, providing fascinating insight into Omani history and society.
Kirkus Reviews