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(l) shared the award with the translator Marilyn Booth
The Omani author Jokha Alharthi won the first Man Booker International Prize this year – the first Arab writer to do so
His novel Celestial Bodies focuses on the lives of three sisters and their families confronted to social changes in Oman.
The judges describe it as "a rich, imaginative, engaging and poetic vision".
Alharthi shares the price of £ 50,000 ($ 63,000) with his translator, American academic Marilyn Booth.
"I am delighted that a window on the rich Arab culture has been opened," Alharthi told reporters at the end of the ceremony at the London Roundhouse.
"Oman has inspired me but I think international readers can understand the human values of the book – freedom and love."
Celestial Bodies takes place in the village of Al Awafi and tells the story of three sisters witnessing Oman's cultural evolution of a traditional society of the post-colonial period.
"This touches on the subject of slavery.I think literature is the best platform for this dialogue," said Alharthi, the first Omani novelist to be the historian Bettany Hughes, president of the jury, stated that the novel showed "a delicate art and troubling aspects of our common history".
"Style is a metaphor for the subject, subtly resisting clichés of race, slavery, and gender," she added.
Alharthi previously wrote two collections of short stories, a children's book, and three novels in Arabic
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