Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the 2021 Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday. The judges commended “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”
The 73-year-old Tanzanian author is based in the United Kingdom. His first language is Swahili, but English became his literary language. He is the first person from Tanzania to win a Nobel Prize.
Gurnah’s celebrated English-language novels include “By the Sea,” “Desertion” and “Paradise,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize. The judges noted that “his stories are marked by the presence of the Quran or ‘Arabian Nights,’ and his English is patched with traces of Swahili, Arabic, Hindi and German.” He is the author of 10 novels, most recently “Afterlives” (2020).
In a statement, the Academy said, “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.”
