Abdulrazak Gurnah
Gurnah, Abdulrazak S. Gurnah, Abdul Razzaq Gurnah, Abd al-Razzaq Journa
Get notified whenever this star has news
Browse by day
Who is this?
Abdulrazak Gurnah (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 (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. 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". On 1 September 2024, Gurnah took up the appointment of the Arts Professor of Literature at New York University Abu Dhabi. He is also Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.
Career
- 1948Born
- 2006Member of Royal Society of Literature
- 2006Won Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
- 2021Won Nobel Prize in Literature
- 2024Won honorary doctorate
- 2025Won honorary doctorate of the University of Lleida
- Notable work: Desertion
- Notable work: Paradise
- Notable work: Gravel Heart
- Notable work: By the Sea
- Notable work: The Last Gift
Trivia
- •Place of birth: Zanzibar City
- •Citizenship: United Kingdom, Tanzania
- •Known as: novelist, university teacher, prose writer, editing staff
- •Genre: prose
What happened recently
The Hindu On Books newsletter: Books on the Constitution, Abdulrazak Gurnah in Kerala, Jhumpa Lahiri in Kolkata and more
Abdulrazak Gurnah: searching for signs of Zanzibar’s most famous writer, all I found was trinkets and tourists
Abdulrazak Gurnah: “It's no surprise that European countries show more sympathy for Ukrainians than Africans”
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Chronicler of Migrant Experience, Wins 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature
'%2F%3E%3Ctext%20x%3D'100'%20y%3D'130'%20font-family%3D'-apple-system%2Csans-serif'%20font-size%3D'80'%20font-weight%3D'900'%20fill%3D'white'%20text-anchor%3D'middle'%3EJA%3C%2Ftext%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E){kind=small}
