Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah wins Nobel Prize in literature

Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the Nobel Prize in literature for the year 2021. The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded by the Swedish Academy, Stockholm, Sweden.

Born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, Gurnah was recognised for his determined and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugees in the gulf between cultures and continents.

Abdulrazak Gurnah arrived in England as a refugee at the end of the 1960s. Until recently, he was a Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, Canterbury.

So far, the Academy has recognised for their literary creations 117 people, of which 16 are women. Gurnah is the author of 10 novels, including “Paradise,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.