By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 has been awarded to the novelist, Abdulrazak Gurnah, making him the first writer of East African origin to become a laureate.
According to the Swedish Royal Academy, which awards the yearly prize, Mr Gurnah was selected “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.
Mr Gurnah was born in 1948 and grew up on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean but arrived in England as a refugee at the end of the 1960s.
He has published 10 novels and a number of short stories. His debut novel, Memory of Departure, from 1987, is about a failed uprising on the African continent while in the second work, Pilgrims Way from 1988; he explores the multifaceted reality of life in exile. The protagonist, Daud, is confronted with the racist climate of his new homeland, England.
The theme of the refugee’s disruption runs throughout his work.
He began writing as a 21-year-old in English exile, and even though Swahili was his first language, English became his literary tool.
Abdulrazak Gurnah Novels in English
Memory of Departure. – London : Jonathan Cape, 1987
Pilgrims Way. – London : Jonathan Cape, 1988
Dottie. – London : Jonathan Cape, 1990
Paradise. – London : Hamish Hamilton, 1994
Admiring Silence. – London : Hamish Hamilton, 1996
By the Sea. – London : Bloomsbury, 2001
Desertion. – London : Bloomsbury, 2005
The Last Gift. – London : Bloomsbury, 2011
Gravel Heart. – London : Bloomsbury, 2017
Afterlives. – London : Bloomsbury, 2020.
On Wednesday, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Benjamin List and David MacMillan for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis which researchers can use to efficiently construct anything from new pharmaceuticals to molecules that can capture light in solar cells. In this way, organocatalysts are bringing the greatest benefit to humankind.
Modupe Gbadeyanka