Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abdulrazak Gurnah (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian novelist and academic of Yemeni origin. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise, 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.

In 2021, Gurnah was awarded the 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".

Early life and education Abdulrazak Salim Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar. His father and uncle were businessmen who had immigrated from Yemen. 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, arriving in England in 1968 as a refugee. He is of Arab heritage. Gurnah has been quoted as 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."

He initially studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded by the University of London. 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, in 1982. in 2017. he is professor emeritus of English and postcolonial literatures at the university.

Since 1 September 2024, Gurnah has held the position of Arts Professor of Literature at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Fiction Alongside his work in academia, Gurnah is a creative writer and novelist. He is the author of many short stories, essays and novels. He began writing out of homesickness in his 20s, starting 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" which feature in his subsequent novels, short stories and critical essays. His readership changed dramatically after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, when publishers and booksellers struggled to meet the sudden surge in demand for his work. Only after the Nobel announcement did American publishers begin bidding for his novel. Afterlives, which was released by Riverhead Books in August 2022. Riverhead went on to acquire the rights to By the Sea and Desertion, two earlier works that had long been out of print. and integrates Swahili, Arabic and German into many of his writings despite some resistance from publishers who preferred to "italicize or Anglicise Swahili and Arabic references and phrases in his books".

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. Much of Gurnah's work is set on the coast of East Africa and many of his novels' protagonists were born in Zanzibar. 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."

Other writing Gurnah edited two 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). From 1987, Gurnah has been a contributing editor of Wasafiri and is on the magazine's advisory board.

Other activities He has been a judge for literary awards, including the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Booker Prize, and the RSL Literature Matters Awards. He supports a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers and literary festivals. He was an original signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions".

Gurnah was featured on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs on 25 May 2025.

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. His novel By the Sea (2001) was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,

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

On 7October 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".

Personal life , Gurnah lives in Canterbury, Kent, England, and he has British citizenship. 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."

He is married to Guyanese-born scholar of literature Denise DeCaires Narain.

Writings Novels Memory of Departure (1987) Pilgrims Way (1988) Dottie (1990) Paradise (1994) (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001) and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize) Gravel Heart (2017) Afterlives (2020) Theft (2025)

Short stories "Cages" (1984), in African Short Stories, edited by Chinua Achebe and Catherine Lynette Innes, Heinemann Educational Books. "Bossy" (1994), in African Rhapsody: Short Stories of the Contemporary African Experience, edited by Nadežda Obradović. Anchor Books. "Escort" (1996), in Wasafiri, vol. 11, no. 23, 44–48. "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. "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 "The Arriver's Tale", in Refugee Tales, edited by David Herd and Anna Pincus (Comma Press, 2016, ) "The Stateless Person's Tale", in Refugee Tales III, edited by David Herd and Anna Pincus (Comma Press, 2019, )

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. . "Imagining the Postcolonial Writer." In: Reading the 'New' Literatures in a Postcolonial Era. Edited by Susheila Nasta. D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2000. . "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. . "Themes and Structures in Midnight's Children". In: The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie. Edited by Abdulrazak Gurnah. Cambridge University Press, 2007. . "Mid Morning Moon". In: Wasafiri (3 May 2011), vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 25–29. .

"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 Books, 1993) The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press, 2007)