The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurn

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to writer Abdulrazak Gurn, who was born on the island of Zanzibar (Tanzania) and has lived in England for most of his life. The Nobel Committee has decided to reward Gurn for his work on “the consequences of colonialism and the fate of refugees between different cultures and continents.”

Abdulrazak Gurna was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Africa. The Nobel Committee notes that Zanzibar was a very cosmopolitan place long before globalization, as the island faced the legacy of various colonial powers.

In the early 1960s, colonialism came to an end and the independent state of Tanzania was established. The new government began to persecute citizens of Arab descent, so Gurna and his family moved to England. He could only return to his homeland in 1984.

Gurn holds a PhD from the University of Kent and has worked as a professor at that university, where he taught English and postcolonial literature.

Gurn has written ten novels (the best known of which are “Paradise”, “By the Sea”, “Desert”), as well as a series of stories.

He started writing in Swahili at the age of 21, but English became his main working language. Gurna is inspired by Arab and Persian poetry, the Koran, and British writers from Shakespeare to VS Naipolas, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001 for works on similar topics.

The Nobel Committee notes that Gurn is a writer who does not try to indulge readers, for example, with a “happy ending”.

#NobelPrize laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s dedication to truth and his aversion to simplification are striking. His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world. pic.twitter.com/FVmk5cvomI

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 7, 2021

“Everything is changing in the world of hip literary works – memories, words, identity. This is probably because his project can never be complete, ”concludes Anders Ulson, chairman of the Nobel Committee.

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