The new novel from the first Arabic-language winner of the Booker International Prize. In their small, mountainside village, Ghazaala and Asiya love each other like sisters, until tragedy strikes, and Asiya is forced into exile. Ghazaala is haunted by Asiya’s absence; a wound that never quite heals. When Ghazaala falls in love with a handsome violinist, everything changes. In Muscat, she tries desperately to balance university and the demands of a new wife. Then she meets Harir, whose life, unbeknownst to Ghaazala, has also been changed by Asiya and the mystery of her fate. Silken Gazelles is a tribute to the power of friendship and the strength of women, intertwining love and loss with deft, beautiful prose. 'A “remarkable” writer who has “constructed her own novelistic form”' The New Yorker