Tanzanian-born Novelist Gurnah Wins Nobel Literature Prize

Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah on Thursday won the Nobel Literature Prize for his unflinching portrayal of the effects of colonialism and the trauma of the refugee experience

Stockholm, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Oct, 2021 ) :Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah on Thursday won the Nobel Literature prize for his unflinching portrayal of the effects of colonialism and the trauma of the refugee experience.

Gurnah, 72, who grew up on the island of Zanzibar but arrived in England as a refugee in the late 1960s to escape revolution, is the fifth African to win the Nobel Literature Prize.

The Swedish academy said Gurnah was honoured "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents." The head of the Academy's Nobel committee, Anders Olsson, said his writings had particular resonance with a record 82 million people fleeing wars, persecution and violence in 2020.

Gurnah told the Nobel Prize website he was stunned to get the call from the Swedish Academy.

"I thought it was a prank," he said. "These things are usually floated for weeks beforehand... so it was not something that was in my mind," he said.

He has published 10 novels and a number of short stories.

"His writings are extremely interesting right now for many, many people in Europe and around the world," Olsson told reporters.

"In all his work, Gurnah has striven to avoid the ubiquitous nostalgia for a more pristine pre-colonial Africa," the Academy said.

His itinerant characters "find themselves in a hiatus between cultures and continents, between a life that was and a life emerging; it is an insecure state that can never be resolved," it added.