The long awaited second novel from an International Booker Prize winning author, The Bitter Orange Tree brings a lot of familiar themes, examining love in all its forms across multiple generations of one Omani family.

Zuhur is struggling to settle into University in England while grieving the loss of her Grandmother back in Oman. Bint Amir has been a central figure in Zuhur’s life, and it is her story, not Zuhur’s, that will be central to the narrative.

Flitting back and forth in time, we learn about Bint Amir’s childhood, her struggles, losses, withheld romances and eventual role as matriarch in a family to whom she is not related, but who will grieve her after she’s gone.

Told from the disjointed mind of a grieving granddaughter, Alharthi artfully conveys the pain, both physical and emotional, that comes from mourning missed opportunity and a time to which we can never return.