Novel “Of Sea and Sand” immerses the reader in the landscape of Oman.
From seasoned Irish author Denyse Woods comes “Of Sea and Sand,” a novel about the power of losing oneself to the pressures of the world and making gains in unexpected places and ways. Woods’ sixth novel is set in Muscat, Oman, and its surrounding areas. The sultanate’s history and geologically diverse landscape are presented through the experiences of expatriates who call the country their home.
Woods first introduces her readers to Gabriel, who arrives in Muscat in 1982. He is fleeing his home in Cork, Ireland, from familial trouble and has found refuge with his sister who lives in Oman. With family ties strained, Gabriel attempts to find solace in the city by the sea, where the March heat beats down on his head as does his guilt. Attempting to forget his past, Gabriel immerses himself in Oman – its deserts, mountains, sea, and people. And while there, he meets a woman, someone only he can see but no one else can.
Meanwhile, Thea is in Iraq, amid the Iran-Iraq war, working as a secretary with an Irish company. In need of adventure and experience, the young woman makes Baghdad her home. It is the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, the 8th-century architecture of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Al-Tar Caves that keep her there despite the war. But an event that is out of Thea’s control forces her to return to Cork.
More than 25 years later, Gabriel and Thea meet in Muscat, and while they seem familiar to each other, they have never met before.
Woods’ novel is full of mystery, accompanied by the fascinating ethos, history and geography of the Middle East. She allows her readers to journey through Oman as her characters do, from Old Muscat, with its narrow streets and small shops, to the 16th-century Muscat forts built during the time of the Portuguese, to the Hajjar mountain range, and Tethyan ophiolites.
Woods cleverly uses the uniquely varied landscape to add to the layers of her characters and their lives. Where there is beauty enough to make someone fall in love with Oman, there are also flash floods and dangerous desert routes that can cause harm, and sometimes death, a reminder that unpredictability is never far behind her characters.
Woods creates an atmosphere of uncertainty but also uses Oman, its culture, its language and its diverse population to make her story feel whole. Ultimately, the novel is about life and its ups and downs, its losses and gains, and the erratic paths it can take someone on, all that can end up making or breaking a person.
“Of Sea and Sand” is published by Hoopoe, an imprint of the American University in Cairo Press. Manal Shakir is the author of “Magic Within,” published by HarperCollins India.
What We Are Reading Today: Of Sea and Sand
What We Are Reading Today: Of Sea and Sand
What We Are Reading Today: Frogs of the World: A Guide to Every Family
Authors: Mark O’Shea & Simon Maddock
With more than 7,600 known species, frogs exhibit an extraordinary range of forms and behaviors, from those that produce toxins so deadly that they could kill a human many times over to those that can survive being frozen in ice.
“Frogs of the World” is an essential guide to this astonishingly diverse group of animals. An in-depth introduction covers everything from the origins and evolution of frogs to their life cycles and defense strategies.
What We Are Reading Today: Sixty Miles Upriver
Author: Richard E. Ocejo
Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some 28,000 people located 60 miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley.
Like many similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents.
“Sixty Miles Upriver” tells the story of how Newburgh started gentrifying, describing what happens when White creative professionals seek out racially diverse and working-class communities and revealing how gentrification is increasingly happening outside large city centers in places where it unfolds in new ways.
What We Are Reading Today: A Death in the Rainforest
Author: Don Kulick
As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick went to the tiny village of Gapun in New Guinea to document the death of the native Tayap, an endangered Papuan language.
“A Death in the Rainforest” takes readers inside the village, revealing what it is like to live in a place carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest.
This book offers insight into the impact of white society on the farthest reaches of the globe — and the story of why this anthropologist realized finally that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.
An engaging, deeply perceptive, and brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, the book takes readers into a world that endures in the face of massive changes, one that is on the verge of disappearing forever.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Moon That Turns You Back’
- The book contains various poems, some experimental, some soaked in grief, some documenting the mundane, but always with a purpose. She perhaps sums it best when she writes: “I remember so you can forget”
Author: Hala Alyan
The first time I heard Palestinian-American artist Hala Alyan speak was when she acted in the starring role in Lebanese-American filmmaker Darine Hotait’s 2015 short film, “I Say Dust.”
In those 15 minutes of beautifully shot frames, you visually travel through time, space and various emotional states as Alyan leads the way.
Both Hotait and Alyan were deliberate in showcasing their Arab-centric stories of belonging and identity. Alyan’s fierce eyes were kind but intense on the screen; her movement was soft but firm and when she spoke, she left you speechless — but in the best way.
In the film, she was the epitome of poetry, and now you can explore Alyan’s words further with her latest work, a book of poetry titled, “The Moon That Turns You Back,” which was published in March this year.
For the past decade or so, Alyan has explored stories of complexities of identity and the impact of displacement, especially in relation to the Palestinian diaspora. In this latest collection, her writing takes us through Brooklyn, Beirut, Palestine and places that exist in between or in fragmented memories.
Alyan said that she does not have just one middle name, she has six, and not a single one of those are her mother’s. She writes evocative and concize lines such as “A city full of men still has a mother,” and “every time I tell the story, I warp it,” and her poetry is vividly descriptive with lines such as “lipstick like a sliced finger.” She also writes relatable lines such as “I’m terrible at parties, secrets and money,” and “a body is a calendar of breaths.”
The book contains various poems, some experimental, some soaked in grief, some documenting the mundane, but always with a purpose. She perhaps sums it best when she writes: “I remember so you can forget.”
Alyan is an adjunct assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University after earning her doctorate in clinical psychology from Rutgers University. She has also published several novels and well-received essays. She won the Arab American Book Award in 2013 and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2018.
What We Are Reading Today: Plankton: A Worldwide Guide
Authors: Tom Jackson & Jennifer Parker
“Plankton” are the unsung heroes of planet Earth. Passive drifters through the world’s seas, oceans, and freshwater environments, most are invisible or very small, but some are longer than a whale. They are the global ocean’s foundation food, supporting almost all oceanic life, and they are also vitally important for land-based plants, animals, and other organisms. “Plankton” provides an incomparable look at these remarkable creatures, opening a window on the elegance and grace of microscopic marine life.
