Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah awarded Nobel literature prize | World

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STOCKHOLM (AP) — U.K.-centered Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose perform explores the legacies of imperialism on uprooted folks, received the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday.

The Swedish Academy mentioned the award was in recognition of Gurnah’s “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the destiny of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

Born in Zanzibar in 1948, Gurnah moved to Britain as a teenage refugee immediately after an rebellion on the Indian Ocean island in 1968.

Just lately retired as a professor of put up-colonial literature at the University of Kent, he is the writer of 10 novels, together with “Paradise,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994, “By the Sea” and “Desertion.”

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for literature, called him “one of the world’s most notable submit-colonial writers,” with his roots in Zanzibar, a location that “was cosmopolitan lengthy before globalization bonus.”

He reported Gurnah’s figures “find them selves in the gulf concerning cultures … amongst the lifetime still left behind and the existence to come, confronting racism and prejudice, but also persuasive on their own to silence the reality or reinventing a biography to steer clear of conflict with reality.”

Gurnah, whose indigenous language is Swahili but who writes in English, is only the sixth Africa-born writer to be awarded the Nobel for literature, which has been dominated by European and North American writers because it was established in 1901. He is and the initial Black African winner since Wole Soyinka in 1986.

Hamad Mbarouk Hamad, director of the Cultural Arts Middle in Zanzibar, said he felt “proud” at the information. But he stated he experienced in no way browse any of the writer’s operates.

“He’s famous for these who like to study. For every day people today, I never consider so,” Hamad mentioned.

The prestigious award arrives with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (more than $1.14 million). The funds will come from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

Last year’s prize went to American poet Louise Glück for what the judges described as her “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere elegance can make particular person existence common.”

Glück was a well known option right after a number of a long time of controversy. In 2018, the award was postponed right after sexual intercourse abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, the secretive system that chooses the winners. The awarding of the 2019 prize to Austrian author Peter Handke prompted protests mainly because of his powerful help for the Serbs for the duration of the 1990s Balkan wars.

Still to arrive are prizes for remarkable do the job in the fields of peace and economics.

Lawless reported from London. Involved Push writers Frank Jordans in Berlin and Cara Anna in Nairobi. Kenya, contributed.

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