Posts featuring Jokha Alharthi

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Workshops, festivals, and plenty of new publications and announcements to celebrate in this week's round of literary news.

The “great moon of December” leads us into the final starts of 2021, though the literary world shows no signs of winding down. Let our editors introduce you to classical poetry reawakened, Arab literature awards, star-studded literary events in Tokyo, the latest from the European Literature Festival, and much more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

Once upon a time, the so-called ‘women’s magazines’ of today had a completely different form (though they were never truly intended for women per se). Back in the tenth century, there was a celebrated Shiʻite Muslim Arab court poet, master chef, and polymath called Kushājim; originally from Ramla in Palestine—near contemporary Tel Aviv—Kushājim lived during the turbulent war-ridden period of the Middle and Late Abbasid Caliphates, which led him to move between Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo before finally settling in Aleppo. During his lifetime, Kushājim was considered the epitome of excellence in literature, and was highly commended by the literary critics of his time, both for his poetic works and intellectual faculties. His canon “vividly chronicles culinary, social, and intellectual aspects of court life [. . .], detailing numerous native and exotic foodstuffs and recipes; the social etiquettes of sharing wine and food; the various musical instruments used at the time to entertain the caliphs and their guests; the harem with its cross-dressing male and female dancers, concubines, and odalisques; the wide variety of plants and geometric designs found in courtly gardens; indoor pastimes and outdoor sports; the art of gift-giving; and the traits of coveted courtiers and boon companions.” What does this resemble but the contemporary women’s magazine?

Ancient Exchanges, an online journal at the University of Iowa devoted to literary translations of ancient texts, has recently published four gastronomic poems by Kushājim—on asparagus, mushabbak, khushkanaj (both desserts), and pomegranates. Translated from classical Arabic by Salma Harland, the four poems are run bilingually, accompanied with art by ArabLit Quarterly art director Hassân Al Mohtasib.

In her translator’s note (which includes a teaching guide), Harland explains that “although the original poems were written in accordance with the fixed feet and rhyme schemes often used in classical Arabic poetry, I have chosen to prioritize aesthetic grace and readability over meter without completely eliminating musicality.”

One is invited to take a seat at Kushājim’s table, set by Harland, and to take in a feast by a master who “not only details the preparation methods and ingredients needed for certain dishes but also the impact that their elegant presentation has on the banquet guests. Mouths water and eager hands cannot keep their distance”; even “[a] sedulous ascetic would break his fast / and yield before such a repast.” READ MORE…

Celestial Troubles: Love and Transition in Oman

In Celestial Bodies, Alharthi takes us on a bewildering journey that is both specific to Oman and relatable in its experiences.

Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies was awarded the Man Booker International Prize earlier this year, making her the first author from the Arabian Gulf to win the prize. She was also the first Omani author ever to have her novel translated from Arabic into English. In the following essay, writer and anthropologist MK Harb examines how Oman’s overlooked history as an imperial dynasty, and its rapidly changing society are integral to the force of Alharthi’s novel.

The internal monologue of Abdallah is unnerving, and often unsettling. Lost between trauma and nostalgia, he repeatedly reflects on his fractured relationship with his father, a notorious merchant and slave owner. Situated in the balmy village of al-Awafi, Abdallah is one of the many members of an Omani family encountering the upheavals and changes of modernity brought on by the state. To some, Oman is an obscure country with an eccentric Sultan, whilst to others, its green pastures and monsoons represent a luscious geographic rarity in the Arabian Peninsula. Unknown to many is Oman’s long and complex history as an imperial dynasty. Oman’s history is as much African as it is Arab; with Zanzibar as its capital, the Sultanate ruled in East Africa from 1698 until the bloody revolution of 1963. Oman’s rule in East Africa represents a history of vernacular and mercantile economic systems that existed prior to the arrival of modern capitalism, but it also represents a racial history of manumission and slavery. Jokha Alharthi’s award-winning novel, Celestial Bodies, tells this history, unravelling the ghosts of an empire, and the precariousness of modernity in Omani society. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

Bucharest makes waves and the Man Booker International hits headlines.

News of the Man Booker International winner has made its way around the senses of the literary-minded public around the world, but we are here with a personal take on its winner, and why this unprecedented win has earned its accolades and perhaps could also potentially earn a place on your shelf. Also on our list is the incredibly poetic nation of Romania, who presented a manifold of verse champions for Bucharest’s International Poetry Festival. Reporting from amongst the greats are our editors at the front.

Barbara Halla, Editor-at-Large, covering the Man Booker International 2019

I was many things the night of the Man Booker International announcement, but gracious wasn’t one of them. Before the announcement was made on May 21, I wrote for Asymptote about my thoughts on the longlist and (correctly) predicted that Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth and published by Scottish indie Sandstone Press, would win it. Celestial Bodies represents many firsts in the prize’s history: it is the first book written in Arabic to win the prize, as well as the first book by an Omani author (in fact, Jokha Alharthi is the first female Omani author to ever be translated into English) and with a Scottish press to do so. Although its win was a bit of a surprise to others (being as it was surrounded by books receiving a lot more press and praise), the judges seemed quite taken with it. Talking to Five Books, and even during her announcement, chair of the judges, Bettany Hughes, highlighted one particular line from Celestial Bodies that she believed embodies the spirit of the prize itself: “We get to know ourselves better in new, strange places.”

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Who Will Win the 2019 Man Booker International?

I tried to decipher from their inflection and word choices whether perhaps one of the books held their attention more than the others.

We know you’re just as eager as we are to learn who will win the Man Booker International Prize tomorrow, so we’ve enlisted our very own Barbara Halla to walk you through her predictions! A member of this year’s Man Booker International Shadow PanelBarbara has read every book on the short- and longlists, making her our resident expert. Read on for her top 2019 MBI picks!

Last year, someone called the Man Booker International my version of the UEFA Champions League, which is fairly true. Although I don’t place any bets, I do spend a lot of my time trying to forecast and argue about who will win the prize. And I am not alone. For a community obsessed with words and their interpretation, it is not surprising that many readers and reviewers will try to decipher the (perhaps inexistent) breadcrumbs the judges leave behind, or go through some Eurovision level of political analysis to see how non-literary concerns might favour one title over the other. Speaking from personal experience, this literary sleuthing has been successful on two out of three occasions. After a meeting with some of the judges of the 2016 MBI at Shakespeare & Company, I left with the sense that Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (translated by Deborah Smith) would take home the prize that year. In 2018, Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights (translated by Jennifer Croft) seemed to be everyone’s favourite, and despite a strong shortlist, I was delighted, although not shocked, to see it win.

The winner of this year’s Man Booker prize is proving more elusive. The shortlist is strong, but no one title has become a personal, or fan-, favourite. And I find the uncertainty at this stage in the competition very interesting. It is almost in direct contrast to how the discussion around the prize unfolded between the unveiling of the longlist and the shortlist. When the longlist was announced on 12 March, it was immediately followed by a flurry of online reactions that are all part of a familiar script: despite predictions by “expert” readers, few big names and titles made it onto the longlist. With good reason, some literary critics addressed the list’s shortcomings with regards to its linguistic and national diversity. Independent presses were congratulated for again dominating the longlist, a reward for their commitment to translated fiction. But as dedicated readers tackled the longlist head-on, there was a general feeling of disappointment with a good portion of the titles, which allowed the best to rise to the top quickly.

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