Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abdulrazak Gurnah FRSL (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution.^[1] His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Abdulrazak Gurnah FRSL
Gurnah in January 2023
Born	(1948-12-20) 20 December 1948 (age 75) Sultanate of Zanzibar
Occupation	Novelist, professor
Language	English
Education	Canterbury Christ Church University (BA) University of Kent (MA, PhD)
Notable works	Paradise (1994) By the Sea (2001) Desertion (2005)
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (2021)
Website
rcwlitagency.com

Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".^[1][2][3] He is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.^[4]

Early life and education

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948^[5] in the Sultanate of Zanzibar.^[6] He left the island, which later became part of Tanzania, at the age of 18 following the overthrow of the ruling Arab elite in the Zanzibar Revolution,^[3][1] arriving in England in 1968 as a refugee. He is of Arab heritage,^[7] and his father and uncle were businessmen who had immigrated from Yemen.^[8] Gurnah has been quoted saying, "I came to England when these words, such as asylum-seeker, were not quite the same – more people are struggling and running from terror states."^[1][9]

He initially studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded by the University of London.^[10] He then moved to the University of Kent, where he earned his PhD with a thesis titled Criteria in the Criticism of West African Fiction,^[11] in 1982.^[6]

Career

From 1980 to 1983, Gurnah lectured at Bayero University Kano in Nigeria. He then became a professor of English and postcolonial literature at the University of Kent, where he taught until his retirement^[3][12] in 2017; he is now professor emeritus of English and postcolonial literatures at the university.^[13]

Although Gurnah's novels were received positively by critics, they were not commercially successful and, in some cases, were not published outside the United Kingdom.^[14] After he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, publishers and booksellers struggled to keep up with the increase in demand for his work.^[14][15] It was not until after the Nobel announcement that Gurnah received bids from American publishers for his novel Afterlives, with Riverhead Books publishing it in August 2022.^[16] Riverhead also acquired rights to By the Sea and Desertion, two Gurnah works that had gone out of print.^[15]

Writing

Alongside his work in academia, Gurnah is a creative writer and novelist. He is the author of many short stories, essays and 10 novels.^[17]

While his first language is Swahili, he has used English as his literary language.^[18] However, Gurnah integrates bits of Swahili, Arabic and German into most of his writings. He has said that he had to push back against publishers to continue this practice and they would have preferred to "italicize or Anglicize Swahili and Arabic references and phrases in his books".^[12] Gurnah has criticized the practices in both British and American publishing that want to "make the alien seem alien" by marking "foreign" terms and phrases with italics or by putting them in a glossary.^[12] As academic Hamid Dabashi notes, Gurnah "is integral to the manner in which Asian and African migratory and diasporic experiences have enriched and altered English language and literature. ... Calling authors like Gurnah diasporic, exilic, or any other such self-alienating term conceals the fact that English was native to him even before he set foot in England. English colonial officers had brought it home to him."^[19]

Gurnah began writing out of homesickness during his 20s. He started with writing down thoughts in his diary, which turned into longer reflections about home, and eventually grew into writing fictional stories about other people. This created a habit of using writing as a tool to understand and record his experience of being a refugee, living in another land and the feeling of being displaced. These initial stories eventually became Gurnah's first novel, Memory of Departure (1987), which he wrote alongside his Ph.D. dissertation. This first book set the stage for his ongoing exploration of the themes of "the lingering trauma of colonialism, war and displacement" throughout his subsequent novels, short stories and critical essays.^[12]

Consistent themes run through Gurnah's writing, including exile, displacement, belonging, colonialism and broken promises by the state. Most of his novels tell stories about people living in the developing world, affected by war or crisis, who may not be able to tell their own stories.^[20][21]

Much of Gurnah's work is set on the coast of East Africa^[22] and many of his novels' protagonists were born in Zanzibar.^[23] Though Gurnah has not returned to live in Tanzania since he left at 18, he has said that his homeland "always asserts himself in his imagination, even when he deliberately tries to set his stories elsewhere."^[12]

Literary critic Bruce King posits that Gurnah's novels place East African protagonists in their broader international context, observing that in Gurnah's fiction "Africans have always been part of the larger, changing world".^[24] According to King, Gurnah's characters are often uprooted, alienated, unwanted and therefore are, or feel, resentful victims".^[24] Felicity Hand suggests that Gurnah's novels Admiring Silence (1996), By the Sea (2001) and Desertion (2005) all concern "the alienation and loneliness that emigration can produce and the soul-searching questions it gives rise to about fragmented identities and the very meaning of 'home'."^[25] She observes that Gurnah's characters typically do not succeed abroad following their migration, using irony and humour to respond to their situation.^[26]

Novelist Maaza Mengiste has described Gurnah's works by saying: "He has written work that is absolutely unflinching and yet at the same time completely compassionate and full of heart for people of East Africa. [...] He is writing stories that are often quiet stories of people who aren't heard, but there's an insistence there that we listen."^[12]

Aiming to build the readership for Gurnah's writing in Tanzania, the first translator of his novels into Swahili, academic Dr Ida Hadjivayanis of the School of Oriental and African Studies, has said: "I think if his work could be read in East Africa it would have such an impact. ... We can't change our reading culture overnight, so for him to be read the first steps would be to include Paradise and Afterlives in the school curriculum."^[27]

Other work

Gurnah edited three and a half volumes of Essays on African Writing and has published articles on a number of contemporary postcolonial writers, including V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Zoë Wicomb. He is the editor of A Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Since 1987 he has been a contributing editor of Wasafiri and he is on the magazine's advisory board.^[28][29] He has been a judge for awards including the Caine Prize for African Writing,^[30] the Booker Prize.^[31] and the RSL Literature Matters Awards.^[32]

Awards and honours

Gurnah's 1994 novel Paradise was shortlisted for the Booker, the Whitbread and the Writers' Guild Prizes as well as the ALOA Prize for the best Danish translation.^[33] His novel By the Sea (2001) was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,^[33] while Desertion (2005) was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.^[33][34]

In 2006 Gurnah was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.^[35] In 2007 he won the RFI Témoin du Monde (Witness of the World) award in France for By the Sea.^[36]

On 7 October 2021 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".^[2][3][1] Gurnah was the first Black writer to receive the prize since 1993, when Toni Morrison won it,^[3][15] and the first African writer since 1991, when Nadine Gordimer was the recipient.^[12][37]

Personal life

Gurnah lives in Canterbury^[38] and has British citizenship.^[39] He maintains close ties with Tanzania, where he still has family and where he says he goes when he can: "I am from there. In my mind I live there."^[40] He is married to the Guyanese-born scholar of literature, Denise de Caires Narain.^{[41][42][43][44]}

Writings

Novels

• Memory of Departure (1987)^[45]
• Pilgrims Way (1988)^[46]
• Dottie (1990)^[47]
• Paradise (1994)^[48] (shortlisted for the Booker Prize^[49] and the Whitbread Prize;^[49] selected for the Big Jubilee Read)
• Admiring Silence (1996)^[50]
• By the Sea (2001)^[48] (longlisted for the Booker Prize^[51] and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize)^[51]
• Desertion (2005)^[52] (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize)^[33]
• The Last Gift (2011)^[53]
• Gravel Heart (2017)^[54]
• Afterlives (2020)^{[55][56][57][58][59]}

Short stories

• "Cages" (1984), in African Short Stories, edited by Chinua Achebe and Catherine Lynette Innes, Heinemann Educational Books. ISBN 9780435902704
• "Bossy" (1994), in African Rhapsody: Short Stories of the Contemporary African Experience, edited by Nadežda Obradović. Anchor Books. ISBN 9780385468169
• "Escort" (1996), in Wasafiri, vol. 11, no. 23, 44–48. doi:10.1080/02690059608589487
• "The Photograph of the Prince" (2012), in Road Stories: New Writing Inspired by Exhibition Road, edited by Mary Morris. Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, London. ISBN 9780954984847
• "My Mother Lived on a Farm in Africa" (2006), in NW 14: The Anthology of New Writing, Volume 14, selected by Lavinia Greenlaw and Helon Habila, London: Granta Books^[60]
• "The Arriver's Tale", in Refugee Tales, edited by David Herd and Anna Pincus (Comma Press, 2016, ISBN 9781910974230)^[61]
• "The Stateless Person's Tale", in Refugee Tales III, edited by David Herd and Anna Pincus (Comma Press, 2019, ISBN 9781912697113)^[62]

Non-fiction: essays and criticism

• "Matigari: A Tract of Resistance." In: Research in African Literatures, vol. 22, no. 4, Indiana University Press, 1991, pp. 169–72. JSTOR 3820366.
• "Imagining the Postcolonial Writer." In: Reading the 'New' Literatures in a Postcolonial Era. Edited by Susheila Nasta. D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2000. ISBN 9780859916011.
• "The Wood of the Moon." In: Transition, no. 88, Indiana University Press, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, 2001, pp. 88–113. JSTOR 3137495.
• "Themes and Structures in Midnight's Children". In: The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie. Edited by Abdulrazak Gurnah. Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 9780521609951.^[63]
• "Mid Morning Moon". In: Wasafiri (3 May 2011), vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 25–29. doi:10.1080/02690055.2011.557532.
• Abdulrazak Gurnah (July 2011). "The Urge to Nowhere: Wicomb and Cosmopolitanism". Safundi. 12 (3–4): 261–275. doi:10.1080/17533171.2011.586828. ISSN 1543-1304. Wikidata Q108824246.
• "Learning to Read". In: Matatu, no. 46, 2015, pp. 23–32, 268.

As editor

• Essays on African Writing Vol. 1 A re-evaluation and 2 Contemporary Literature (Heinemann Educational, 1993)
• The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

References

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5. Loimeier, Manfred (30 August 2016). "Gurnah, Abdulrazak". In Ruckaberle, Axel (ed.). Metzler Lexikon Weltliteratur: Band 2: G–M (in German). Springer. pp. 82–83. ISBN 978-3-476-00129-0. from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
6. King, Bruce (2004). Bate, Jonathan; Burrow, Colin (eds.). The Oxford English Literary History. Vol. 13. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 336. ISBN 978-0-19-957538-1. OCLC 49564874.
7. "Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the Nobel prize in literature for 2021". The Economist. 7 October 2021.
8. Sveriges Television AB, Nobel 2021: Porträtten – Litteraturprisporträttet (in Swedish), retrieved 9 December 2021
9. Prono, Luca (2005). "Abdulrazak Gurnah – Literature". British Council. from the original on 3 August 2019. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
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11. Erskine, Elizabeth, ed. (1989). Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature for 1986. Vol. 61. W. S. Maney & Son. p. 588. ISBN 0-947623-30-2. ISSN 0066-3786.
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14. Alter, Alexandra (27 October 2021). "He Won the Nobel. Why Are His Books So Hard to Find?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 27 October 2021.
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16. Mbue, Imbolo (18 August 2022). "Love and Empire". The New York Times.
17. Johnson, Simon; Pawlak, Justyna (8 October 2021). "Tanzanian novelist Gurnah wins 2021 Nobel for depicting impact of colonialism, migration". Reuters. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
18. Pilling, David (8 October 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature". Financial Times.
19. Dabashi, Hamid (12 October 2021). "This one for Africa: The Nobel Prize ennobles itself". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
20. Mengiste, Maaza (8 October 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah: where to start with the Nobel prize winner". The Guardian. from the original on 9 October 2021. Retrieved 9 October 2021.
21. Kaigai, Ezekiel Kimani (April 2014) "Encountering Strange Lands: Migrant Texture in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Fiction". Stellenbosch University. Archived from the original on 10 October 2021. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
22. Lavery 2013, p. 118.
23. Bosman, Sean James (26 August 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah". Rejection of Victimhood in Literature by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Luis Alberto Urrea. Brill. pp. 36–72. doi:10.1163/9789004469006_003. ISBN 978-90-04-46900-6. S2CID 241357989.
24. King 2006, p. 86.
25. Hand 2012, p. 39.
26. Hand 2012, p. 56.
27. Sippy, Priya (8 November 2021). "Why Tanzanian Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah is hardly known back home". BBC News. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
28. "People | Abdulrazak Gurnah". Wasafiri. from the original on 3 August 2019. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
29. "Abdulrazak Gurnah Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature". Wasafiri. 8 October 2021. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
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31. "Abdulrazak Gurnah on being appointed as Man Booker Prize judge". University of Kent. 26 October 2016. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
32. . The Royal Society of Literature. 10 September 2018. Archived from the original on 14 August 2020. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
33. "Abdulrazak Gurnah: Influencing policymakers, cultural providers, curricula, and the reading public worldwide via new imaginings of empire and postcoloniality". REF 2014 | Impact Case Studies. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
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36. Fruchon-Toussaint, Catherine (8 March 2007). "Abdulrazak Gurnah, Prix RFI Témoin du Monde 2007". RFI (in French). from the original on 14 March 2021. Retrieved 8 October 2021.
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38. Shariatmadari, David (11 October 2021). "'I could do with more readers!' – Abdulrazak Gurnah on winning the Nobel prize for literature". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
39. "Can the Nobel Prize 'revitalize' African literature?". Deutsche Welle. 8 October 2021. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
40. Awami, Sammy (9 October 2021). "In Tanzania, Gurnah's Nobel Prize win sparks both joy and debate". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
41. Marshall, Alex (21 August 2022). "Abdulrazak Gurnah Refuses to Be Boxed In: 'I Represent Me'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
42. Narain, Denise DeCaires (2011). Olive Senior. Northcote House Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7463-1099-1.
43. "Denise Decaires Narain : University of Sussex". www.sussex.ac.uk. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
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45. Hand, Felicity (15 March 2015). "Searching for New Scripts: Gender Roles in Memory of Departure". Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 56 (2): 223–240. doi:10.1080/00111619.2014.884991. ISSN 0011-1619. S2CID 144088925. from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
46. Mirmotahari, Emad (May 2013). "From Black Britain to Black Internationalism in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Pilgrims Way". English Studies in Africa. 56 (1): 17–27. doi:10.1080/00138398.2013.780679. ISSN 0013-8398. S2CID 154423559. from the original on 7 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
47. Lewis, Simon (May 2013). "Postmodern Materialism in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Dottie : Intertextuality as Ideological Critique of Englishness". English Studies in Africa. 56 (1): 39–50. doi:10.1080/00138398.2013.780680. ISSN 0013-8398. S2CID 145731880.
48. Kohler, Sophy (4 May 2017). "'The spice of life': trade, storytelling and movement in Paradise and By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah". Social Dynamics. 43 (2): 274–285. doi:10.1080/02533952.2017.1364471. ISSN 0253-3952. S2CID 149236009.
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50. Olaussen, Maria (May 2013). "The Submerged History of the Indian Ocean in Admiring Silence". English Studies in Africa. 56 (1): 65–77. doi:10.1080/00138398.2013.780682. ISSN 0013-8398. S2CID 162203810.
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54. Bosman, Sean James (3 July 2021). "'A Fiction to Mock the Cuckold': Reinvigorating the Cliché Figure of the Cuckold in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017)". Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies. 7 (3): 176–188. doi:10.1080/23277408.2020.1849907. ISSN 2327-7408. S2CID 233624331.
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Sources

• Hand, Felicity (2012). "Becoming Foreign: Tropes of Migrant Identity in Three Novels by Abdulrazak Gurnah". In Sell, Jonathan P. A. (ed.). Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 39–58. doi:10.1057/9780230358454_3. ISBN 978-1-349-33956-3.
• King, Bruce (2006). "Abdulrazak Gurnah and Hanif Kureishi: Failed Revolutions". In Acheson, James; Ross, Sarah C.E. (eds.). The Contemporary British Novel Since 1980. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 85–94. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-73717-8_8. ISBN 978-1-349-73717-8. OCLC 1104713636.
• Lavery, Charné (May 2013). "White-washed Minarets and Slimy Gutters: Abdulrazak Gurnah, Narrative Form and Indian Ocean Space". English Studies in Africa. 56 (1): 117–127. doi:10.1080/00138398.2013.780686. ISSN 0013-8398. S2CID 143927840.

Further reading

• Breitinger, Eckhard. "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S". Contemporary Novelists.
• Jones, Nisha (2005). "Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation". Wasafiri, 20:46, 37–42. doi:10.1080/02690050508589982.
• Palmisano, Joseph M., ed. (2007). "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S.". Contemporary Authors. Vol. 153. Gale. pp. 134–136. ISBN 978-1-4144-1017-3. ISSN 0275-7176. OCLC 507351992.
• Whyte, Philip (2019). "East Africa in Postcolonial Fiction: History and Stories in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise". In Noack, Stefan; Christine de Gemeaux; Uwe Puschner (eds.). Deutsch-Ostafrika: Dynamiken europäischer Kulturkontakte und Erfahrungshorizonte im kolonialen Raum. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-631-77497-7.
• Whyte, Philip (2004). "Heritage as Nightmare: The Novels of Abdulrazak Gurnah", in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies 27, no. 1:11–18.

External links

 

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