Abdulrazak Gurnah

Novelist

Across his deeply researched and imaginatively bold novels, Abdulrazak Gurnah has charted the influence of various kinds of imperialism— Arab, German, British—on east Africa. Always respected but hardly a household name, Gurnah was thrust into the spotlight when he won the

Nobel in autumn 2021. Cited by the committee for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee,” he is also a master of evoking the sights and smells of his home island, Zanzibar. If you don’t know his work, start with Paradise, an account of a slave boy called Yusuf, and then Desertion, set during the 1964 Zanzibar revolution.