The Nature of Things

This book was the winner of the Man Booker International Prize last year. The writer is Omani and is the first female Omani writer to be translated into English and the first from the Arabian Gulf to win this prize. She is also - as best I can recall - the first Omani writer I have read. I should also mention that Marilyn Booth translated the book from Arabic. Had I not known that it was a translation, I could not have discerned it so smoothly did the narrative flow. And that is not to say that I did not have some  problems with the narrative. There is a huge number of characters in this story and most of their stories are told by an omniscient third party narrator, but two of the characters speak in first-person narratives. I found the switch back and forth a bit confusing, and it made the story harder to follow and invest in. Plus some characters are mentioned tangentially and never heard of again. Nevertheless, overall this story provides extraordinary insight into a society tha...