Novel
ملائكة الجبل الأخضر
Not translated into English
Abdallah al-Ta'i · 1963
Synopsis
The narrator, Khalid, is an Omani who has left to study and work outside his country, and whose itinerary leads from Cairo to Baghdad and Kuwait, by way of Bahrain and the coast of the Gulf emirates. Meanwhile, in the interior of Oman, the Jebel Akhdar revolt breaks out, from 1954 to 1958, against Sultan Said bin Taimur and his British allies. In Baghdad, Khalid falls in love with Wadad, an Iraqi nurse who has taken part in the demonstrations against corruption.
Context
Begun in Bahrain in 1958 and completed in Kuwait in 1962, the novel appeared in Beirut, from the al-Wafa' presses, with the subtitle “the story of the Omani revolution in its first phase”. It is regarded as the first novel of Oman. Salem al-Busaidi, in the daily Oman in 2024, reads in it the ideals of Arab nationalism and unity, and the author dedicates it as a record of the dark present and a call to a bright future. A second edition appeared in Kuwait in 2009.
Who it is for
For discovering the first Omani novel, written outside the country by an Arab nationalist, about a revolt of the 1950s.
Prizes and reception
Oman Daily hails its author as the pioneer of the Omani novel, and the University of Nizwa has devoted a study day to him.