Oman author Jokha Alharthi has won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Celestial Bodies. The first Arabic-language writer to take the prize, Alharthi will split the 50,000 pound prize with her translator, Marilyn Booth.
The prize is a counterpart to the Man Booker Prize for English-language novels and is open to books in any language that have been translated into English.
Celestial Bodies is the story of three sisters and of a desert country confronting its slave-owning past and a complex modern world.
Historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes presented the prize at a ceremony at the Roundhouse in London. She said that the winning novel “evokes the forces that constrain us and those that set us free”. Hughes, who also led the judging panel, said it is a book to “win over the head and the heart in equal measure”.
Celestial Bodies beat five other finalists from Europe and South America, including last year’s winner, Olga Tokarczuk, from Poland.
(With inputs from agencies)
