The Zanzibari writer gains recognition for his compelling and compassionate novels, which explore the effects of colonialism and the reality of being a refugee
The late Sara Danius, the first woman to ever head the Nobel literature committee, once told an audience: "What does it take to win the Nobel Prize in Literature? I don’t know. All I know is that the criteria are simple, but tough. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to someone who has done outstanding work in an idealistic direction that adds the greatest benefit to humankind. You get awarded not for a single work, but for a life’s work."
Meeting that criteria, Abdulrazak Gurnah has published short stories and 10 novels over decades, each drawing from his own experience arriving in England as a refugee fleeing persecution at the end of the 1960s. Having grown up on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, his first language was Swahili but English became his literary tool. Until his recent retirement, he was the Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, focusing on writers such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, and Salman Rushdie.
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Gurnah's intellectual pursuit for the truth and refusal to simplify colonialism, corruption and enduring exploitation for his readers have always been at the centre of his literary universe. For instance, his 1994 breakthrough novel, Paradise, evolved from a research trip to East Africa around 1990. It is an interesting subversion of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, delving into urban East African society before and after its colonisation in a story told from the perspective an innocent young hero, Yusuf. Paradise was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
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He began writing his latest novel, Afterlives, at the age of 21. An intergenerational story of a family living under German rule in East Africa, he explores the bleak reality of war and violence through compelling characters, such as Hamza, who returns to his childhood village after being forced to fight with the schutztruppe, the German colonial troops, against his own people. Recoiling from stereotypes, he is determined to capture the humanity and cultural diversity of East Africans, especially against a backdrop of real historical events at the turn of the century.