Abdulrazak Gurnah, Nobel Prize in Literature 2021

Abdulrazak Gurnah, FRSL (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian novelist who is based in the United Kingdom. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and went to the UK as a refugee in the 1960s during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; Desertion (2005); and By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".

Biography

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar, which is now part of present day Tanzania. After fleeing Zanzibar at age 18 to escape persecution of Arab citizens during the Zanzibar Revolution, he arrived in England in 1968 as a refugee. Gurnah has been quoted saying, 'I came to England when these words, such as asylum-seeker, were not quite the same – more people are struggling and running from terror states.'

He initially studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded by the University of London. He then moved to the University of Kent, where he earned his PhD, with a thesis titled Criteria in the Criticism of West African Fiction, in 1982. From 1980 to 1983, Gurnah lectured at Bayero University Kano in Nigeria. He was a professor at the University of Kent's department of English until his retirement.-

Gurnah edited two volumes of Essays on African Writing and has published articles on a number of contemporary postcolonial writers, including V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Zoë Wicomb. He is the editor of A Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He has been a contributing editor of Wasafiri since 1987. He has been a judge for awards including the Caine Prize for African Writing and the Booker Prize.

Gurnah lives in the United Kingdom.

Awards and honours

• 2006 - Elected, fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2007 - the RFI Witness of the world award in France
• 2021 - the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021

Writings: Novels

• Memory of Departure (1987)
• Pilgrims Way (1988)
• Dottie (1990)
• Paradise (1994) (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Whitbread Prize)
• Admiring Silence (1996)
• By the Sea (2001) (longlisted for the Booker Prize; shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize)
• Desertion (2005)
• The Last Gift (2011)
• Gravel Heart (2017)
• Afterlives (2020)

  ---

  
  

Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the 2021 Nobel prize in literature



Abdulrazak Gurnah The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021

Born: 1948, Zanzibar

Prize motivation: "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents."