Stockholm: The 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature has been 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”
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
Born in Tanzania in 1948, Gurnah has written 10 novels, many of which focus on the experiences of refugees. He grew up on the island of Zanzibar but had to move to London at a very young age at the end of the 1960s as a refugee.
He had won the Booker Prize for his 1994 novel ‘Paradise’, which was about a boy growing up in Tanzania in the early 20th century.
Until recently, he was a Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent, Canterbury.
The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million), which comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.