This is the first novel from the Gulf to be shortlisted for the Man Booker International prize; that it is by an Omani author makes it rarer still.
In an introductory note the translator, Marilyn Booth, sets out the book’s key themes, built around the pressures on three generations of an Omani family as a result of social change.
But it’s harder to make out these themes in the novel itself, perhaps because of the complex structure. The narrative alternates between a third-person viewpoint and the first-person voice of Abdallah, a married businessman haunted by his father’s cruelty. The stories of many others are woven in, making the shape of the book more a tangled skein than a linear progression.
Frequent reference to the family tree that opens the book is needed, but cannot unravel all the bewildering inter-relationships. Slavery was only outlawed in Oman in 1970 and its dark complexities affect the families at the heart of the novel.
While there are some frustrations for the reader to overcome, the glimpses into a culture relatively little known in the west are fascinating.
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