Jokha Alharthi, author of Celestial Bodies, wins the Man Booker International Prize

Jokha Alharthi became the first Arab author to win the Man Booker International Prize with her account of Oman's rapid transformation told through the lens of a family.

The author of Celestial Bodies, the first Omani woman to translate an English novel, shares the £ 50,000 prize with her translator, Marilyn Booth.

Celestial Bodies is "a book to conquer on both the head and the heart, not to lose," said historian Bettany Hughes, president of the judges. "Nested voices and deadlines are beautifully served by the rhythm of the novel. His delicate art leads us into a richly imagined community – allowing us to tackle deep questions of time and mortality and worrying aspects of our shared history.

"Style is a metaphor for the subject, subtly resisting clichés of race, slavery and gender. The translation is precise and lyrical, weaving in the cadences of poetry and everyday language. Celestial Bodies evokes the forces that constrain us and those that liberate us. "

Read: Review of the Celestial Bodies: A Beautifully Realized Account of Lives Shooting at the Margin of Change

Elegantly structured and tense, Celestial Bodies, published by Sandstone Press, is located in the village of al-Awafi, where we meet three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a tear; Asma, who gets married through a sense of duty; and Khawla, who refuses any offer while waiting for his beloved, emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness the evolution of Oman from a traditional society, owner of the slave, which is redefined slowly after the colonial era, at the crossroads of its present complex.

Professor Michael Cronin, director of the Trinity Center for Literary and Cultural Translation, wrote, "The way women cope in changing circumstances and what they are and are not allowed to remember is a recurring concern.

"Alharthi traces the fate of a family of merchants with a difficult past in the slave trade and focuses in particular on the lives and destinies of sisters, Mayya, Asma and Khowla. This novel, which brings together three generations of voices that follow the evolution of Oman, pbading from a typical desert dynasty of al-Awafi village to an urban oasis in the city of Muscat, is a narrative beautifully realized lives shot at the edge of change.

"The writing is elliptical in every way and there is a kind of poetic underestimation that draws the reader into the domestic environments and public tribulations of the three sisters. They possess authority and character and, in their different ways, face the muddle of tradition and the uncertain freedoms of the expanding worlds. The novel is also told in part by the voice of Abdallah, Mayya's husband, whose stories of abuse by his father Sulayman also testify to the unacknowledged atrocities of slavery in the region.

"Heavenly bodies skilfully undermine recurring stereotypes about Arabic language and culture, but above all they bring a new, distinct and important voice to world literature."

Alharthi was born in Oman in 1978. She is the author of two previous collections of short stories, a children's book and three novels in Arabic. Fluent in English, she earned a PhD in Clbadical Arabic Poetry in Edinburgh and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat. She lives in Oman.

Marilyn Booth was born in Boston in 1955. A scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, where she resides, she holds the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Chair for the study of the contemporary Arab world at the Oriental Institute.

The 2019 award marks the end of the 18-year sponsorship of the Man Group. The awards, sponsored by Crankstart for the next five years, will now be known as the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize.