Abdulrazak Gurnah facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Abdulrazak Gurnah
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Gurnah in January 2023
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| Born | 20 December 1948 Sultanate of Zanzibar |
| 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) |
Abdulrazak Gurnah (born 20 December 1948) is a famous novelist and professor. He was born in Zanzibar, an island that is now part of Tanzania. In the 1960s, he moved to the United Kingdom as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution.
Gurnah is known for his powerful novels. Some of his most famous books include Paradise (1994), By the Sea (2001), and Desertion (2005). These books have won many awards and have been praised by critics.
In 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He received this award for his honest and caring way of showing how colonialism affects people. His stories also explore the experiences of refugees who are caught between different cultures and places. He used to be a professor of English at the University of Kent in England.
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Early Life and Education
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on December 20, 1948, in the Sultanate of Zanzibar. When he was 18, he left the island. This was after a big change in government called the Zanzibar Revolution. He arrived in England in 1968, seeking safety as a refugee.
His family has Arab roots. His father and uncle were businessmen who had moved from Yemen. Gurnah has shared that when he came to England, the idea of being an "asylum-seeker" was different. He feels that more people today are running from dangerous places.
He first studied at Canterbury Christ Church University. Later, he went to the University of Kent. There, he earned his PhD degree in 1982. His PhD research was about how to review fiction from West Africa.
Career Highlights
Teaching and Academia
From 1980 to 1983, Gurnah taught at Bayero University Kano in Nigeria. After that, he became a professor of English at the University of Kent. He taught there until he retired in 2017. Today, he is an honorary professor at the university.
Writing Novels
Besides teaching, Gurnah is a talented writer. He has written many short stories, essays, and novels. He started writing in his 20s because he missed his home. He began by writing in a diary. These thoughts grew into longer reflections about his homeland. Eventually, he started writing fictional stories about other people.
This habit helped him understand and record his experiences as a refugee. He wrote about living in a new country and the feeling of being displaced. These early stories became his first novel, Memory of Departure (1987). This book set the stage for his later works. His writing often explores the lasting effects of colonialism, war, and being forced to leave home.
Even though critics liked Gurnah's novels, they were not very popular at first. Some of his books were not even published outside the United Kingdom. But after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021, many people wanted to read his books. Publishers and bookstores had trouble keeping enough copies in stock. After the Nobel announcement, American publishers finally started buying rights to his novels.
Gurnah's first language is Swahili. However, he writes his books in English. He often includes words from Swahili, Arabic, and German in his stories. He has said that he had to convince publishers to let him do this. They often wanted to change or explain these "foreign" words. Gurnah believes that marking these words as "alien" can make them seem strange.
Main Themes in His Books
Gurnah's writing often explores similar ideas. These include:
- Being in exile (living away from your home).
- Feeling displacement (not belonging anywhere).
- The idea of "home" and belonging.
- The impact of colonialism.
- Broken promises made by governments.
Most of his novels are set on the coast of East Africa. Many of his main characters were born in Zanzibar. Gurnah has not lived in Tanzania since he was 18. But he says his homeland always influences his imagination, even when he tries to set stories elsewhere.
Literary experts say that Gurnah's novels show how East African characters fit into the wider world. His characters are often uprooted, feel alone, and unwanted. They might feel like victims. His novels also show the loneliness that moving to a new country can cause. They make readers think about identity and what "home" truly means.
Novelist Maaza Mengiste has described Gurnah's books as "absolutely unflinching." She also says they are "completely compassionate and full of heart" for people from East Africa. She notes that he tells "quiet stories of people who aren't heard." But his writing insists that we listen to them.
An academic named Dr. Ida Hadjivayanis is translating Gurnah's novels into Swahili. She hopes that his work will be read more in East Africa. She believes that including his books in school lessons would make a big difference.
Other Writings
Gurnah has also edited several books of essays about African writing. He has published articles about other modern writers. He was also the editor of a book about the writer Salman Rushdie. Since 1987, Gurnah has helped edit the magazine Wasafiri.
Other Activities
Abdulrazak Gurnah has been a judge for several important literary awards. These include the Booker Prize. He also supports a boycott of Israeli cultural groups. He was one of the first people to sign a statement called "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions."
Awards and Honours
Gurnah's 1994 novel Paradise was nominated for several major awards. These included the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize. His novel By the Sea (2001) was also nominated for the Booker Prize. Desertion (2005) was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
In 2006, Gurnah became a member of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2007, he won the RFI Témoin du Monde award in France for By the Sea.
On October 7, 2021, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was recognized for his honest and caring look at how colonialism affects people. The prize also honored his focus on the experiences of refugees caught between different cultures. Gurnah was the first Black writer to win the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993. He was also the first African writer to win since Doris Lessing in 2007.
Personal Life
As of 2021, Gurnah lives in Canterbury, England. He is a British citizen. He still has strong connections to Tanzania. He visits his family there whenever he can. He says, "I am from there. In my mind I live there."
He is married to Denise de Caires Narain. She is a scholar of literature who was born in Guyana.
Writings
Novels
- Memory of Departure (1987)
- Pilgrims Way (1988)
- Dottie (1990)
- Paradise (1994)
- Admiring Silence (1996)
- By the Sea (2001)
- Desertion (2005)
- The Last Gift (2011)
- Gravel Heart (2017)
- Afterlives (2020)
- Theft (2025)
Short Stories
- "Cages" (1984)
- "Bossy" (1994)
- "Escort" (1996)
- "The Photograph of the Prince" (2012)
- "My Mother Lived on a Farm in Africa" (2006)
- "The Arriver's Tale" (2016)
- "The Stateless Person's Tale" (2019)
Non-fiction: Essays and Criticism
- "Matigari: A Tract of Resistance." (1991)
- "Imagining the Postcolonial Writer." (2000)
- "The Wood of the Moon." (2001)
- "Themes and Structures in Midnight's Children". (2007)
- "Mid Morning Moon". (2011)
- "Learning to Read". (2015)
As Editor
- Essays on African Writing Vol. 1 and 2 (1993)
- The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie (2007)
See also
In Spanish: Abdulrazak Gurnah para niños
