East African Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah Wins 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 was awarded to novelist Abdulrazak 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,” according to the Swedish Academy.

He is the first Black writer to win in the Literature category since Toni Morrison in 1993.Gurnah was born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean but arrived in England as a refugee in the end of the 1960s.

He has published ten novels, including Gravel Heart (2017), 1994’s Paradise, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a number of short stories. The theme of the refugee’s disruption runs throughout his work.

BREAKING NEWS:
The 2021 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak 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.” pic.twitter.com/zw2LBQSJ4j

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 7, 2021

The award comes with more than $1 million in prize money.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/07/1043436576/nobel-prize-literature-2021