13 Apr / Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Jokha Alharthi’s third novel is her second to arrive in the U.S., again gorgeously rendered by Oxford professor Marilyn Booth. Their auspicious earlier pairing produced Celestial Bodies (2019), making Alharthi the first female Omani author to be translated into English; the novel became the first written in Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize.
Here, Alharthi again showcases a puzzle-like narrative that eschews linearity, overlaps stories, and requires attentive commitment. At the center is Zuhour, a young Omani woman attending a British university, far from everything (and everyone) familiar. In breaking from home, at least for now, Zuhour is consumed by memories of her late grandmother, who raised three generations of Zuhour’s family.
Interwoven into Bint Aamir’s life are the stories of the many others she unconditionally nurtured, including mothers who couldn’t raise their sons, lost daughters, lovers carelessly denied. Thousands of miles away, Zuhour confronts “an agony of regret” for all the times she abandoned Bint Aamir, ignoring her desperate pleas of “Don’t go.” Drifting at school, Zuhour becomes entangled with two Pakistani sisters, the younger dismayed that the elder secretly married a man their privileged parents would immediately dismiss.
In probing history, challenging social status, questioning familial bonds and debts, Alharthi’s multilayered pages beautifully, achingly unveil the haunting aloneness of women’s experiences.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, April 1, 2022
Readers: Adult
Published: 2016 (Oman), 2022 (United States)