Gurnah is the first African writer to win the award since Zimbabwean Doris Lessing in 2007
07 October 2021 - 16:35Abdulrazak Gurnah reads for a Canterbury Cathedral project in Canterbury, Britain, in this screen shot from a social media video in June 2021. Picture: CHAPTER OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL/REUTERS
Gurnah left Africa as a refugee in the 1960s amid the persecution of citizens of Arab origin under president Abeid Karume’s regime in Zanzibar where he grew up, when the peaceful liberation from British colonial rule led to a revolution. “I think its just brilliant and wonderful,” Gurnah said when asked how he felt to win the prize. “It’s just great — its just a big prize, and such a huge list of wonderful writers — I am still taking it in,” he said. “It was such a complete surprise that I really had to wait until I heard it announced before I could believe it.”
Gurnah’s was the second literature Nobel in a row, and the fourth of the last six, to go to a writer in English, an unusually long stretch for the prize to be dominated by a single language.
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