Determining the Cultural Dynamic Shift in Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies

Abstract

As Raymond Williams in his work Culture and Society, conceptualize the culture as the ‘progressive process’, which keeps on shifting over time and in order to illustrate the present culture one has to analysis its roots i.e, past cultural changes. Celestial Bodies written by Jokha Alharthi is considered as representative novel with transitional theme in Arabic literary circle. It has taken the fancy most particularly of the western readers since it portrays the unseen aspects of Omani society and also captures the spirit of Mid- Eastern transitional societies faced with new challenges and opportunities. Like Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Alharthi also tied her novel intimately to the real history of Oman by capturing the rapid social changes and consequent shift in the cultural panorama through an Omani family over three generation. This paper aims to examine the cultural dynamic shift in Omani author Alharthi’s International Man Booker- Prize 2019 winning novel, Celestial Bodies. It also examined the shifting cultural outlook through blend of old tradition with the modern, changing patterns of gender roles, breaking the taboos, enfeeblement of social structure, attitude towards education and love- stained relationships etc.