Book Club Discussion Questions for Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Zār Exorcism and our BookBrowse Review of Celestial Bodies.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Celestial Bodies, set in a village outside of Muscat, Oman, depicts a culture unknown to most of us in the West. What have you learned, what surprised you, what angered, even shocked, you?
2. Outwardly, women have little, in any, power in Mideast society. But things are not always what they seem. Talk about the kind of subtle, invisible power that the women in Celestial Bodies wield outside the traditional norms.
3. Most of the chapters are told in the third person point-of-view, except for Abdallah, Mayya's husband, who speaks to us in his own voice. Why might Alharthi have made the decision to let Abdallah tell his own story?
4. Speaking of Abdallah and Mayya, when Abdallah asks his wife if she loves him, she responds, "It's the Egyptian films, have they eaten your brain?" What do you make of her response? What does she mean? How does Abdallah react?
5. How are the characters in this novel trapped by the past? Who is trying to escape the past? Who is trying to ignore, or paper over, the past?
6. In what way does the novel hint at currents of change coming to this very traditional society?
7. Much has been made of the book's structure with multiple points of view and shifting time frames. It's even been referred to as a puzzle with each chapter providing a single piece of the picture. Did you find the narrative choice difficult to follow? Why might Alharthi have chosen to write her novel using this fragmented technique?
8. The book's title, literally, means "ladies of the moon." How does this title (perhaps more so than Celestial Bodies) reflect the novel?

Questions provided with permission from Litlovers.com": https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/fiction/celestial-bodies-alharthi?start=3

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Catapult. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.