Read This Book . . .

Zuhur is an Omani woman attending university in the United Kingdom. As she tries to fit in with her classmates, she feels caught between two places. In her first person narration, we learn about her friends, their love interests, and the intersecting lives of the residents of her building. As Zuhur discusses her life, she’s drawn back to Oman and her family.

In these moments when she contemplates her family’s past, we learn of Bint Amir, a woman who Zuhur thought of as an adopted grandmother. Abandoned by her father at a young age, Bint Amir was forced to learn to survive on her own, eventually finding a home with Zuhur’s grandparents, where she became a wet nurse to Zuhur’s father.

The structure of this slim novel moves back and forth between Zuhur’s present and Bint Amir’s past. Eventually, we also learn more about the other women in Zuhur’s life who helped make her the person she is in the present.

Zuhur’s life in the present revolves around a friend of hers who has decided to marry a man who her parents think is not good enough for her. But as she helps her friend find moments alone with her beloved, Zuhur begins to enjoy his company too.

The strength of this novel lies in its approach to intimacy between characters. In just over two hundred pages, Alharthi gives us an intricate family saga. Somehow, I feel like I know these characters so well that I must have read a much longer novel. But that just illustrates Alharthi’s skill in characterization.

So if you love family saga and nonlinear structures, then this book will be right in your wheelhouse.