world: oman | From the Heart of Europe

Oman is the state at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula, with the UAE to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, Yemen to the southwest and the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman, both part of the extended Indian Ocean, to the east. It is the oldest independet state in the Arab World, the locals having expelled the Portuguese in the 17th century and then established an empire down the coast of Africa to Zanzibar. (As I always say, the Indian Ocean is a corridor, not a barrier.)

It came under strong British influence in the mid-20th century, most notably when Sultan Said bin Taimur was overthrown by his son Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 1970. Said had ruled for 38 years, and Qaboos then ruled for almost 50 years until 2020, so this was not a volatile regime change. Qaboos had no children and nominated his cousin Haitham bin Tariq as his successor, and Haitham has ruled since 2020.

See here for the methodology of these posts, though NB that I am now also using numbers from StoryGraph. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Liberia.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	GR raters	LT owners	SG reviews
Sandstorm	James Rollins	55,782	2,760	3,507
Celestial Bodies	Jokha Alharthi	18,335	739	3,385
The Turtle of Oman	Naomi Shihab Nye	2,581	473	565
The Zanzibar Wife	Deborah Rodriguez	2,493	86	221
Z miłości? To współczuję. Opowieści z Omanu	Agata Romaniuk	12,050	5	707
The Road To Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands	Nicholas Clapp	464	281	55
The English Girl	Katherine Webb	996	59	77
Silken Gazelles	Jokha Alharthi	653	23	86

This week’s winner, by a long way on Goodreads and LibraryThing and by a closer margin on StoryGraph, is Sandstorm, the first in the Sigma Force series of thrillers by James Rollins. I had hoped that it might be set mainly outside the country, but it seems that our heroes pursue the bad guys to the desert well before the half-way point of the book, so it qualified under my criteria.

Celestial Bodies, by Omani writer Jokha Alharthi, is about three Omani sisters and their unhappy marriages. Silken Gazelles, also on the list, is about two women coming to terms with the gap between tradition and modernity.

The Turtle of Oman is about a little boy whose family is about to emigrate to America, and his farewell to different places in the country.

The Zanzibar Wife is about three women, one American, one British and Zanzibari, getting to know each other in Oman.

Z miłości? To współczuję. Opowieści z Omanu is the second most popular book set in Oman on both Goodreads and StoryGraph, but has almost no owners on LibraryThing, which shows LT’s bias against certain countries, unfortunately. It is about Oman under the late years of Sultan Qaboos, as observed keenly by a Polish woman living there, and appears to be non-fiction. It has not been translated into English; the title means roughly, “For love? I’m so sorry: Stories from Oman”.

The Road To Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands is about the search for a lost Arab city in the desert of Oman, by the leader of the expedition. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who was also on the expedition, has written a book about it as well, but it hasn’t had the same impact.

The English Girl is about a young archaeologist visiting 1950s Oman, where she meets her heroine and gets into trouble.

Including the StoryGraph numbers gained us Silken Gazelles at the cost of The Secret of the Sands by Sara Sheridan, a romantic thriller set in the 19th century.

Three books by Omani authors did very well on Goodreads, but are completely absent from StoryGraph, with two of them scoring in the low single figures on LibraryThing and the third absent there as well. They are Dilshad and The Garden by Bushra Khalfan, and Exile of the Water Diviner by Zahran Alqasmi, all of which appear to be set in Oman.

I disqualified a lot of books for not being set in Oman. The only one I have actually read is also the most popular on all three platforms – The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty, which was up for the Hugo in 2024, and whose heroine lives in a small village in what we would call Oman, but spends most fo the book travelling.

My only personal connection with Oman is that our dear family friend Matt Cummins, who died last May, worked there for several years in the 1990s. Apart from The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, I have no books on my shelves with much to say about it – Hourani’s History of the Arab Peoples is the closest.

Four of the next five countries will be European: Norway, Finland, a leap south to Mauretania, and then back again for Slovakia.

From the Heart of Europe

Books, politics, languages and life

Tag Archives: world: oman

The best known books set in each country: Oman