Jokha Alharthi

Jokha Alharthi (Arabic: جوخة الحارثي‎, born July 1978)[1] also spelt al-Harthi, is an Omani writer and academic. She was educated in Oman and in the United Kingdom. She obtained her PhD in classical Arabic literature from Edinburgh University. She is currently an associate professor in the Arabic department at Sultan Qaboos University.[2]

Jokha Alharthi
BornJuly 1978 (age 42–43)
Oman
NationalityOmani
OccupationWriter and academic
Known forMan Booker prize 2019
Notable work
Celestial Bodies

Alharthi has published three collections of short stories, three children's books, and three novels (Manamat, Sayyidat el-Qamar and Narinjah).[3] She has also authored academic works. Her work has been translated into English, Serbian, Korean, Italian, and German and published in Banipal magazine.[4] She was also one of eight participants in the 2011 IPAF Nadwa (writers' workshop). Alharthi won the Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature, for her novel Narinjah (Bitter Orange) in 2016. Narinjah will be published in English translation in 2021.[5]

Sayyidat el-Qamar was shortlisted for the Zayed Award 2011. An English translation by Marilyn Booth was published in the UK by Sandstone Press in June 2018 under the title Celestial Bodies, and won the Man Booker International Prize 2019.[6] Sayyidat el-Qamar was the first work by an Arabic-language writer to be awarded the Man Booker International Prize, and the first novel by an Omani woman to appear in English translation. [7] The Man Booker International Prize judges heralded the book as "A richly imagined, engaging and poetic insight into a society in transition and into lives previously obscured."[1] As of 2020, translation rights to Sayyidat el-Qamar have been sold in Azerbaijani, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Malayalam, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish.

In March 2020 she appeared in a panel discussion at Adelaide Writers' Week, along with Iranian-American journalist Azadeh Moaveni and Lebanese-British journalist Zahra Hankir.[8]

See also

References
  1. "Man Booker International Prize 2019 winner announced". The Man Booker Prize. 31 May 2019. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  2. The Tanjara blog, 24 October 2011.
  3. Author's website Archived 28 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Profile in Banipal website. Archived 13 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Nathan, Lucy (16 October 2019). "Scribner pre-empts second novel by Booker International winner Jokha Alharthi". BookBrunch. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  6. "Women dominate Man Booker International prize 2019 shortlist". The Irish Times. 9 April 2019. Retrieved 11 April 2019.
  7. Silcox, Beejay (21 October 2019). "The First Arabic Novel to Win the International Booker Prize". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 February 2020.
  8. "The Challenge of Change: Women's lives in the Middle East". Adelaide Festival (Writers' Week). Retrieved 5 March 2020.
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