This handout photograph released by the University of Kent on October 7, 2021 shows Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Zanzibar-born author awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, teaching students at the University of Kent on May 19, 2016.
Abdulrazak Gurnah effortlessly addresses the issues of political asylum, marginalisation and integration.
His earliest fictions also addressed the unpalatable issues of same-gender sex in a society he came from.
This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature went to Abdulrazak Gurnah, 73-year-old writer and academic, born in Zanzibar and currently residing in England. This choice took many literature aficionados by surprise, including serious scholars of literature from both Britain and outside. This is completely understandable, given that the last time any African won the Nobel was decades ago with few, and far between.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is an example of a writers’ writer who doubles as an academic as well. He found his way to Britain to pursue his university education since his ambition to do his “O” Levels in his native Zanzibar were cut short due to the cataclysmic events of 1964 and he had to remain behind because of the banning of people from leaving the island for fear that it was going to be emptied of people. Gurnah was later to find his way out of the morass that Zanzibar had become. It seemed as if this incubus of postponement was to dog his life every time an opportunity seemed to stare in his face.
