Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has been named the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, praised by the Academy for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism.”
“It’s just great – it’s just a big prize, and such a huge list of wonderful writers – I am still taking it in,” Gurnah said, BBC reported.
“It was such a complete surprise that I really had to wait until I heard it announced before I could believe it.”
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Gurnah, 73, is a Zanzibari novelist who arrived in England as a refugee in late 1960s. He is the author of 10 novels, including Paradise and Desertion.
His novel Paradise, told the story of a boy growing up in Tanzania in the early 20th Century and was nominated for the Booker Prize, marking his breakthrough as a novelist.
“Abdulrazak Gurnah’s dedication to truth and his aversion to simplification are striking,” the Nobel Committee for Literature said in a statement.
“His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world.”
“[His] characters find themselves in a hiatus between cultures and continents, between a life that was and a life emerging; it is an insecure state that can never be resolved.”
Gurnah is the first black African author to have won the award since Wole Soyinka in 1986.
Gurnah is not the first Muslim writer to get the prestigious award.
In 1988, Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz got the award for his contributions to the Arabic literature. Turkish author Orhan Pamuk also received the award in 1006.
The post Muslim Wins Nobel Literature Prize 2021 appeared first on About Islam.
source https://aboutislam.net/muslim-issues/europe/muslim-wins-nobel-literature-prize-2021/
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