Abdulrazak Gurnah
Abdulrazak Gurnah FRSL | |
---|---|
Born | Sultanate of Zanzibar | 20 December 1948
Occupation | Novelist, professor |
Language | English |
Education | Canterbury Christ Church University (BA) University of Kent (MA, PhD) |
Notable works |
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Notable awards | Nobel Prize in Literature (2021) |
Website | |
rcwlitagency.com |
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".[1][2][3] He is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.[4]
Early life and education
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948
He initially studied at
Career
From 1980 to 1983, Gurnah lectured at Bayero University Kano in Nigeria. He then became a professor of English and postcolonial literature at the University of Kent, where he taught until his retirement[3][12] in 2017; he is now professor emeritus of English and postcolonial literatures at the university.[13]
Although Gurnah's novels were received positively by critics, they were not commercially successful and, in some cases, were not published outside the United Kingdom.
Writing
Alongside his work in academia, Gurnah is a creative writer and novelist. He is the author of many short stories, essays and 10 novels.[17]
While his first language is Swahili, he has used English as his literary language.[18] However, Gurnah integrates bits of Swahili, Arabic and German into most of his writings. He has said that he had to push back against publishers to continue this practice and they would have preferred to "italicize or Anglicize Swahili and Arabic references and phrases in his books".[12] Gurnah has criticized the practices in both British and American publishing that want to "make the alien seem alien" by marking "foreign" terms and phrases with italics or by putting them in a glossary.[12] As academic Hamid Dabashi notes, Gurnah "is integral to the manner in which Asian and African migratory and diasporic experiences have enriched and altered English language and literature. ... Calling authors like Gurnah diasporic, exilic, or any other such self-alienating term conceals the fact that English was native to him even before he set foot in England. English colonial officers had brought it home to him."[19]
Gurnah began writing out of homesickness during his 20s. He started with writing down thoughts in his diary, which turned into longer reflections about home, and eventually grew into writing fictional stories about other people. This created a habit of using writing as a tool to understand and record his experience of being a refugee, living in another land and the feeling of being displaced. These initial stories eventually became Gurnah's first novel, Memory of Departure (1987), which he wrote alongside his Ph.D. dissertation. This first book set the stage for his ongoing exploration of the themes of "the lingering trauma of colonialism, war and displacement" throughout his subsequent novels, short stories and critical essays.[12]
Consistent themes run through Gurnah's writing, including exile, displacement, belonging, colonialism and broken promises by the state. Most of his novels tell stories about people living in the developing world, affected by war or crisis, who may not be able to tell their own stories.[20][21]
Much of Gurnah's work is set on the coast of East Africa[22] and many of his novels' protagonists were born in Zanzibar.[23] Though Gurnah has not returned to live in Tanzania since he left at 18, he has said that his homeland "always asserts himself in his imagination, even when he deliberately tries to set his stories elsewhere."[12]
Literary critic Bruce King posits that Gurnah's novels place East African protagonists in their broader international context, observing that in Gurnah's fiction "Africans have always been part of the larger, changing world".[24] According to King, Gurnah's characters are often uprooted, alienated, unwanted and therefore are, or feel, resentful victims".[24] Felicity Hand suggests that Gurnah's novels Admiring Silence (1996), By the Sea (2001) and Desertion (2005) all concern "the alienation and loneliness that emigration can produce and the soul-searching questions it gives rise to about fragmented identities and the very meaning of 'home'."[25] She observes that Gurnah's characters typically do not succeed abroad following their migration, using irony and humour to respond to their situation.[26]
Novelist Maaza Mengiste has described Gurnah's works by saying: "He has written work that is absolutely unflinching and yet at the same time completely compassionate and full of heart for people of East Africa. [...] He is writing stories that are often quiet stories of people who aren't heard, but there's an insistence there that we listen."[12]
Aiming to build the readership for Gurnah's writing in Tanzania, the first translator of his novels into Swahili, academic Dr Ida Hadjivayanis of the
Other work
Gurnah edited three and a half volumes of Essays on African Writing and has published articles on a number of contemporary postcolonial writers, including
Awards and honours
Gurnah's 1994 novel
In 2006 Gurnah was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.[35] In 2007 he won the RFI Témoin du Monde (Witness of the World) award in France for By the Sea.[36]
On 7 October 2021 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".[2][3][1] Gurnah was the first Black writer to receive the prize since 1993, when Toni Morrison won it,[3][15] and the first African writer since 1991, when Nadine Gordimer was the recipient.[12][37]
Personal life
Gurnah lives in Canterbury[38] and has British citizenship.[39] He maintains close ties with Tanzania, where he still has family and where he says he goes when he can: "I am from there. In my mind I live there."[40] He is married to the Guyanese-born scholar of literature, Denise de Caires Narain.[41][42][43][44]
Writings
Novels
- Memory of Departure (1987)[45]
- Pilgrims Way (1988)[46]
- Dottie (1990)[47]
- Paradise (1994)[48] (shortlisted for the Booker Prize[49] and the Whitbread Prize;[49] selected for the Big Jubilee Read)
- Admiring Silence (1996)[50]
- By the Sea (2001)[48] (longlisted for the Booker Prize[51] and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize)[51]
- Commonwealth Writers' Prize)[33]
- The Last Gift (2011)[53]
- Gravel Heart (2017)[54]
- Afterlives (2020)[55][56][57][58][59]
Short stories
- "Cages" (1984), in African Short Stories, edited by ISBN 9780435902704
- "Bossy" (1994), in African Rhapsody: Short Stories of the Contemporary African Experience, edited by Nadežda Obradović. ISBN 9780385468169
- "Escort" (1996), in
- "The Photograph of the Prince" (2012), in Road Stories: New Writing Inspired by Exhibition Road, edited by Mary Morris. ISBN 9780954984847
- "My Mother Lived on a Farm in Africa" (2006), in NW 14: The Anthology of New Writing, Volume 14, selected by Granta Books[60]
- "The Arriver's Tale", in Refugee Tales, edited by David Herd and Anna Pincus (ISBN 9781910974230)[61]
- "The Stateless Person's Tale", in Refugee Tales III, edited by David Herd and Anna Pincus (Comma Press, 2019, ISBN 9781912697113)[62]
Non-fiction: essays and criticism
- "Matigari: A Tract of Resistance." In: JSTOR 3820366.
- "Imagining the Postcolonial Writer." In: Reading the 'New' Literatures in a Postcolonial Era. Edited by ISBN 9780859916011.
- "The Wood of the Moon." In: JSTOR 3137495.
- "Themes and Structures in Midnight's Children". In: The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie. Edited by Abdulrazak Gurnah. ISBN 9780521609951.[63]
- "Mid Morning Moon". In: Wasafiri (3 May 2011), vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 25–29. .
- Abdulrazak Gurnah (July 2011). "The Urge to Nowhere: Wicomb and Cosmopolitanism". Safundi. 12 (3–4): 261–275. Wikidata Q108824246.
- "Learning to Read". In: Matatu, no. 46, 2015, pp. 23–32, 268.
As editor
- Essays on African Writing Vol. 1 A re-evaluation and 2 Contemporary Literature (Heinemann Educational, 1993)
- The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
References
- ^ a b c d e "Nobel Literature Prize 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah named winner". BBC News. 7 October 2021. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
- ^ a b "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021". NobelPrize.org. 7 October 2021. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ a b c d e Flood, Alison (7 October 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the 2021 Nobel prize in literature". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ "Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah". University of Kent. 7 October 2021. Archived from the original on 8 October 2021. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
- ISBN 978-3-476-00129-0. Archivedfrom the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ OCLC 49564874.
- ^ "Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the Nobel prize in literature for 2021". The Economist. 7 October 2021.
- ^ Sveriges Television AB, Nobel 2021: Porträtten – Litteraturprisporträttet (in Swedish), retrieved 9 December 2021
- ^ Prono, Luca (2005). "Abdulrazak Gurnah – Literature". British Council. Archived from the original on 3 August 2019. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ Hand, Felicity. "Abdulrazak Gurnah (1948–)". The Literary Encyclopedia (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 June 2018. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ISSN 0066-3786.
- ^ from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
- ^ Attree, Lizzy (7 October 2021). "Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah: An introduction to the man and his writing". The World. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 27 October 2021.
- ^ a b c Alter, Alexandra (5 November 2021). "Why one Nobel Laureate is struggling to sell books in America". The Independent. Archived from the original on 5 November 2021.
- ^ Mbue, Imbolo (18 August 2022). "Love and Empire". The New York Times.
- ^ Johnson, Simon; Pawlak, Justyna (8 October 2021). "Tanzanian novelist Gurnah wins 2021 Nobel for depicting impact of colonialism, migration". Reuters. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
- ^ Pilling, David (8 October 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature". Financial Times.
- ^ Dabashi, Hamid (12 October 2021). "This one for Africa: The Nobel Prize ennobles itself". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
- ^ Mengiste, Maaza (8 October 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah: where to start with the Nobel prize winner". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 9 October 2021. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
- ^ Kaigai, Ezekiel Kimani (April 2014) "Encountering Strange Lands: Migrant Texture in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Fiction". Stellenbosch University. Archived from the original on 10 October 2021. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
- ^ Lavery 2013, p. 118.
- S2CID 241357989.
- ^ a b King 2006, p. 86.
- ^ Hand 2012, p. 39.
- ^ Hand 2012, p. 56.
- ^ Sippy, Priya (8 November 2021). "Why Tanzanian Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah is hardly known back home". BBC News. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
- ^ "People | Abdulrazak Gurnah". Wasafiri. Archived from the original on 3 August 2019. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ "Abdulrazak Gurnah Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature". Wasafiri. 8 October 2021. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
- ^ "Kenyan wins African writing prize". BBC News. 16 July 2002.
- ^ "Abdulrazak Gurnah on being appointed as Man Booker Prize judge". University of Kent. 26 October 2016. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ "RSL Literature Matters Awards 2019". The Royal Society of Literature. 10 September 2018. Archived from the original on 14 August 2020. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
- ^ a b c d "Abdulrazak Gurnah: Influencing policymakers, cultural providers, curricula, and the reading public worldwide via new imaginings of empire and postcoloniality". REF 2014 | Impact Case Studies. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
- The Authors Guild. 7 October 2021. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
- ^ "Abdulrazak Gurnah". Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 10 October 2020. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ Fruchon-Toussaint, Catherine (8 March 2007). "Abdulrazak Gurnah, Prix RFI Témoin du Monde 2007". RFI (in French). Archived from the original on 14 March 2021. Retrieved 8 October 2021.
- ^ Lall, Rashmee Roshan (31 October 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah: the truth-teller's tale". openDemocracy. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
- ^ Shariatmadari, David (11 October 2021). "'I could do with more readers!' – Abdulrazak Gurnah on winning the Nobel prize for literature". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
- ^ "Can the Nobel Prize 'revitalize' African literature?". Deutsche Welle. 8 October 2021. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
- ^ Awami, Sammy (9 October 2021). "In Tanzania, Gurnah's Nobel Prize win sparks both joy and debate". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-7463-1099-1.
- ^ "Denise Decaires Narain : University of Sussex". www.sussex.ac.uk. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
- ^ "Denise DeCaires Narain". Wasafiri Magazine. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
- from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- S2CID 145731880.
- ^ S2CID 149236009.
- ^ a b "Nobel Prize in Literature 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah honoured". The Irish Times. 7 October 2021. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- S2CID 162203810.
- ^ a b "Abdulrazak Gurnah". Booker Prize. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ Mars-Jones, Adam (15 May 2005). "It was all going so well". The Observer. Archived from the original on 26 January 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- S2CID 143867462.
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- ^ Mengiste, Maaza (30 September 2020). "Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah review – living through colonialism". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 14 September 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ "Love and Empire". 18 August 2022. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
- ^ "Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah Urges Us Not to Forget the Past". Time. 10 January 2022. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
- ^ Domini, John (8 December 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah's Afterlives". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
- ^ "Gurnah's latest novel 'Afterlives' explores effects of colonial rule in East Africa". PBS NewsHour. 28 September 2022. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
- ^ "Biobibliographical notes". Nobel Prize. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ "Refugee Tales – Comma Press". commapress.co.uk. Archived from the original on 28 May 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ "Refugee Tales: Volume III – Comma Press". commapress.co.uk. Archived from the original on 10 May 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
- ^ Gurnah, Abdulrazak, "7 – Themes and structures in Midnight's Children", in Gurnah (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie, Cambridge University Press, 28 November 2007.
Sources
- Hand, Felicity (2012). "Becoming Foreign: Tropes of Migrant Identity in Three Novels by Abdulrazak Gurnah". In Sell, Jonathan P. A. (ed.). Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing. ISBN 978-1-349-33956-3.
- King, Bruce (2006). "Abdulrazak Gurnah and Hanif Kureishi: Failed Revolutions". In Acheson, James; Ross, Sarah C.E. (eds.). The Contemporary British Novel Since 1980. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 85–94. OCLC 1104713636.
- Lavery, Charné (May 2013). "White-washed Minarets and Slimy Gutters: Abdulrazak Gurnah, Narrative Form and Indian Ocean Space". English Studies in Africa. 56 (1): 117–127. S2CID 143927840.
Further reading
- Breitinger, Eckhard. "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S". Contemporary Novelists.
- Jones, Nisha (2005). "Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation". Wasafiri, 20:46, 37–42. .
- Palmisano, Joseph M., ed. (2007). "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S.". Contemporary Authors. Vol. 153. OCLC 507351992.
- Whyte, Philip (2019). "East Africa in Postcolonial Fiction: History and Stories in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise". In Noack, Stefan; Christine de Gemeaux; Uwe Puschner (eds.). Deutsch-Ostafrika: Dynamiken europäischer Kulturkontakte und Erfahrungshorizonte im kolonialen Raum. ISBN 978-3-631-77497-7.
- Whyte, Philip (2004). "Heritage as Nightmare: The Novels of Abdulrazak Gurnah", in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies 27, no. 1:11–18.
External links
- Abdulrazak Gurnah on Nobelprize.org
- Abdulrazak Gurnah at RCW Literary Agency.