Abdulrazak Gurnah named winner of 2021 Nobel Literature Prize

Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian novelist from Zanzibar has been announced winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. 

In awarding him the prize, the Swedish Academy praised Gurnah for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

Born in Zanzibar in 1948, he has since lived in the UK and Nigeria.

He writes in English, and his most famous novel is Paradise, which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994

Gurnah currently lives in the UK and taught English Literature at the University of Kent.

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