‘Uncompromising and compassionate’ Uk-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah awarded Nobel Prize for Literature
Uk-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose experience of crossing continents and cultures has fed his novels about the impact of migration on individuals and societies, has won the Nobel Prize for literature.
The Swedish Academy said the award was in recognition of Gurnah's "uncompromising and compassionate penetrationoftheeffectsofcolonialism and the fate of the refugee".
Gurnah, who recently retired as a professor of post-colonial literatures at the University of Kent,gotthecallfromtheswedish Academy in the kitchen of his Kent home – and initially thought it was a prank.
Hesaidhewas"surprisedand humbled" by the award.
Gurnah said the themes of migration and displacement thatheexplored"arethingsthat are with us every day" – even more now than when he came to Britain in the 1960s.
"People are dying, people are being hurt around the world. We must deal with these issues in the most kind way," he said.
"It's still sinking in that the Academy has chosen to high
light these themes which are present throughout my work, it's important to address and speak about them."
Born in 1948 on the island of
Zanzibar,nowpartoftanzania, Gurnah moved to Britain as a teenage refugee in 1968, fleeing a repressive regime that persecuted the Arab Muslim community to which he belonged.
He has said he "stumbled into" writing after arriving in England as a way of exploring both the loss and liberation of the emigrant experience.
Gurnah is the author of ten novels, including Memory Of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Paradise–shortlistedforthebooker Prize in 1994 – By The Sea, Desertion and Afterlives.
Many of his works explore the profound impact of migration both on uprooted people and the places they make their new homes.
Gurnah, whose native languageisswahilibutwhowrites inenglish,isonlythesixthafrica-born author to be awarded the Nobel for literature, which has been dominated by Europeanandnorthamericanwriters since it was founded in 1901.
Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Literatureprizein1986,welcomedthe latestafricannobellaureateas proof that "the arts – and literature in particular – are well and thriving in "a continent in permanent travail".