Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has been announced as the winner of the 2021 Nobel prize for literature. The Tanzanian, UK-based author won “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. The Nobel Prize in literature is awarded by the Swedish Academy, Stockholm, Sweden.
Who is Abdulrazak Gurnah?
The Tanzanian novelist was born in Zanzibar in 1948 and has since lived in the UK and Nigeria. He writes in English, and his most famous novel is Paradise, which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994. Gurnah currently lives in the UK and taught English Literature at the University of Kent. Until recently, he was Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, Canterbury, and has published ten novels and a number of short stories.
