LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION 2024 & BY AL OWAIS CREATIVITY AWARD WINNER SALHA OBEID. “She always feels she can trust nothing except the emotions brought by scent; through it she feels, and through it she sees…” In Circle of Spices, Salha Obeid weaves an intoxicating, multi-layered sensory epic spanning three distinct eras and cities across the Arabian Peninsula. In 9th-century Baghdad, the doomed Abbasid caliph-poet Ibn al-Mu’tazz hides within his palace from the flames of vengeance; in 1920s Dubai, young Shamma alters her merchant family’s destiny with an uncanny olfactory genius; and a century later along the same coast, her descendant Sherihan navigates a hyper-modern metropolis with a sense of smell so supernatural it decodes the hidden emotions, sorrows, and deceits of everyone around her. But what begins as a family gift soon reveals itself as a devastating psychological curse: to perceive the world entirely through smell is to be denied the mercy of forgetting. When a childhood companion returns seeking her hand in marriage, Sherihan is deeply unsettled to find he emits no discernible scent at all. Fusing philosophical depth with exquisite olfactory realism, Salha Obeid crafts a mesmerizing, richly textured tour de force. Circle of Spices is a profound, unforgettable meditation on memory, the rapid metamorphosis of Emirati society, and the fragile covenants between love, scent, and mortality.