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By:
Shaban Maxharraj
- December 6, 2021 23:27
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The Tanzanian author, who lives in the United Kingdom, was awarded the Nobel Prize in October for novels that explore the impact of migration on individuals and societies. Gurnah grew up on the island of Zanzibar and arrived in England as a refugee in the 60s. He has drawn on his experiences for 10 novels, including: "Remembrance of Departure," "The Pilgrim's Way," and "Paradise."
Nobel laureate for literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah, on Monday received the prize for 2021 in a midday ceremony at the residence of the Swedish ambassador in London.
The Tanzanian author, who lives in the United Kingdom, was awarded the Nobel Prize in October for novels that explore the impact of migration on individuals and societies.
Gurnah grew up on the island of Zanzibar and arrived in England as a refugee in the 60s.
He has drawn on his experiences for 10 novels, including: "Remembrance of the Departure", "The Pilgrim's Way" and "Paradise".
He said that migration "is not just my story, it is a phenomenon of our time".
For the second year, the coronavirus disrupted the traditional official organization in Stockholm, which was attended by prize winners in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and economics.
Prize winners in 2021, as the AP writes, will continue to receive their awards at scaled-down local ceremonies adapted to pandemic times.
On Monday, the Italian physics laureate, Giorgio Parisi, received his prize at a ceremony in Rome.
US Physics Laureate Syukuro Manabe, Chemistry Laureate David WC MacMillan, and Economics Laureate Joshua D. Angrist received the medals in Washington.
More ceremonies will be held throughout the week in Germany and the United States.
On Friday, the anniversary of the death of the prize's founder, Albert Nobel, there will be a celebratory ceremony in Stockholm municipality for a local audience, which will include King Carl XVI Gustav and senior Swedish royals.
The "Nobel" Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, because Nobel wanted it that way, for reasons he kept to himself.
A ceremony will be held there on Friday for the winners, journalists Maria Ressa from the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov from Russia.
As for Abdulrazak Gurnah, he was announced as this year's laureate of the biggest literary prize on October 7. It was praised for its "uncompromising and compassionate insight into the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents" and for its "uncompromising struggle against colonialism".
The Tanzanian writer in a few hours became one of the most talked about writers. Until the day he became a "Nobel" laureate, he was little known in literary circles, even though he writes in English. Born in 1948, Gurnah left Zanzibar at the age of 18 as a refugee after a violent 1964 uprising in which soldiers overthrew the country's government, The New York Times wrote. He is the first African to win the award in almost two decades. Anders Olsson, part of the Nobel Prize Committee, had told foreign media that Gurnah was in the kitchen when he was informed that he had been chosen as the winner and the Committee had "a long and very positive conversation" with him. The award is given by the Swedish Academy and is worth 1.14 million dollars.
His best known novel is "Paradise", which won him the Booker Prize in 1994. In addition to being a respected writer, he is also a professor of English Literature at the University of Kent.
"Paradise" is based on the story of an African boy, a tragic love story and a tale of the corruption of traditional African models by European colonialism. He presents a great African voice to American readers – one that prompted Peter Tinniswood to write in the London Times, reviewing Gurnah's earlier novel – “he's a very good writer. I'm sure he will become an outstanding writer."
As written in foreign media reviews for "Paradise", at the age of twelve, Yusufi, the protagonist of this XNUMXth century odyssey, is sold by his father to pay off a debt. From the simple life of rural Africa, Yusuf is thrown into the complexities of pre-colonial urban East Africa – a fascinating world in which Muslim Africans, Christian missionaries and Indians from the subcontinent coexist in a fragile and delicate social hierarchy. Through Yusuf's eyes, Gurnah describes communities at war, trading safaris gone awry, and the universal trials of adolescence.
A Nobel Prize comes with a diploma, a gold medal and a prize of 10 million kroner ($1.15 million), which is split if there are multiple winners.
