Nobel Prize for Literature 2021: novelist Abdul Razzaq Gurna wins for his “uncompromising narrative on colonialism”

The Nobel laureate for literature called on Europe to regard refugees arriving from Africa as a fortune, stressing that they “do not come empty-handed”.

In an interview with the Nobel Foundation, the writer said that “many of them (…) come out of necessity, and frankly because they have something to offer. And they do not come empty-handed”. He called for a change in perception of “talented and energetic people”.

Gorna’s novel “Paradise” was published in 1994 and tells the story of a child who grew up in Tanzania at the turn of the twentieth century. The novel won the Booker Prize, which represented a major achievement in the author’s career as a novelist.

In a statement announcing the laureate’s name, the Nobel Literature Committee said: “Abdul-Razzaq Gurna’s dedication to truth and his aversion to oversimplification is astounding.”

“Her novels move away from stereotypes and open our eyes to a culturally diverse East Africa, unknown to many in the world,” she added.

She continued, “Her characters find themselves in a chasm between cultures and continents, between a life that was there and a life that is emerging, it’s a state of insecurity that can never be resolved.”

The Swedish Academy award is worth ten million crowns, or approximately $ 1.14 million.

Gurna was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania, but fled there in 1968 when the Muslim minority was being persecuted..

Gurna, who was linked to the Arabian Peninsula by family roots, fled the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean to England and was only able to return to Zanzibar in 1984 to see his father, who was in conflict.

Although Gurna has been writing since the age of twenty-one, he has published ten novels since 1987 in addition to other books. Her new novel, Afterlife, a sequel to Paradise, is set at the turn of the 20th century, as the German colonial era in Tanzania was coming to an end.

He writes in English, although his first language is Swahili, spoken in Tanzaya.

He was Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent, Canterbury, until his retirement some time ago.

Gurna is the first black African to win the award since Nigerian Wole Soyinka won it in 1986.

“When I arrived in England the word ‘asylum seeker’ didn’t mean what it means today, with many people suffering to escape terrorist countries,” the novelist said in an interview in 2016.

“The world is a lot more violent than it was in the 1960s, so there is more pressure now on safe countries, they certainly attract more people,” he added.

Asked about his classification as “post-colonial literature” or “world literature” he said: “I prefer not to use any of these phrases, I do not classify myself as a writer in any of the classifications. I don’t know if My name is other than My name “.

Last year, the American poet Louise Gluck received the most famous literary award for her “distinguished poetic voice, whose abstract beauty gives universal character to individual existence”.

Many expectations have spurred the implementation by the Swedish Academy of its promise to broaden its geographical horizons, despite the concern of its president, Anders Olsson, to reiterate his assertion that “moral merit” is the “absolute criterion. and unique “.

Most of the Nobel Prizes in Literature have so far been awarded to Western writers, and since Chinese Mo Yan won in 2012, only writers from Europe or North America have been awarded.

Of the 117 laureates in the literature category since the Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, 95 are European or North American, i.e. more than 80%. As for the number of men on this list, Orna won 102, against just 16 women.