Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948[5] in theSultanate of Zanzibar.[6] His father and uncle were businessmen who had immigrated fromYemen.[7] He left the island, which later became part ofTanzania, at the age of 18, following the overthrow of the ruling Arab elite in theZanzibar Revolution,[1][3] arriving in England in 1968 as a refugee. He is ofArab heritage.[8] 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."[1][9]
From 1980 to 1983, Gurnah lectured atBayero University Kano inNigeria. He then became a professor of English andpostcolonial literature at the University of Kent, where he taught until his retirement[3][12] in 2017. As of 2021[update] he is professoremeritus of English and postcolonial literatures at the university.[13]
Alongside his work in academia, Gurnah is a creative writer and novelist. He is the author of many short stories, essays and novels.[15] 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.[12]
Although Gurnah's novels were received positively by critics, they were not commercially successful and, in some cases, were not published outside the United Kingdom.[16] His readership changed dramatically after he was awarded theNobel 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.[16][17]Afterlives, which was released byRiverhead Books in August 2022.[18] Riverhead went on to acquire the rights toBy the Sea andDesertion, two earlier works that had long been out of print.[17]
While his first language isSwahili, he has used English as his literary language[19] and integrates Swahili, Arabic and German into many of his writings despite some resistance from publishers who preferred to "italicize orAnglicise Swahili and Arabic references and phrases in his books".[12] Gurnah has criticised the practices in both British and American publishing that want to "make the alien seem alien" by marking "foreign" terms and phrases with italics or by putting them in a glossary.[12] As academicHamid Dabashi notes, Gurnah "is integral to the manner in which Asian and African migratory and diasporic experiences have enriched and altered English language and literature. ... Calling authors like Gurnah diasporic, exilic, or any other such self-alienating term conceals the fact that English was native to him even before he set foot in England. English colonial officers had brought it home to him."[20]
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.[21][22] Much of Gurnah's work is set on the coast ofEast Africa[23] and many of his novels'protagonists were born in Zanzibar.[24] 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."[12]
Literary critic Bruce King posits that Gurnah's novels place East African protagonists in their broader international context, observing that in Gurnah's fiction "Africans have always been part of the larger, changing world".[25] According to King, Gurnah's characters are often uprooted, alienated, unwanted and therefore are, or feel, resentful victims".[25] Felicity Hand suggests that Gurnah's novelsAdmiring Silence (1996),By the Sea (2001) andDesertion (2005) all concern "the alienation and loneliness that emigration can produce and the soul-searching questions it gives rise to about fragmented identities and the very meaning of 'home'."[26] She observes that Gurnah's characters typically do not succeed abroad following their migration, using irony and humour to respond to their situation.[27]
NovelistMaaza Mengiste has described Gurnah's works by saying: "He has written work that is absolutely unflinching and yet at the same time completely compassionate and full of heart for people of East Africa. [...] He is writing stories that are often quiet stories of people who aren't heard, but there's an insistence there that we listen."[12]
Aiming to build the readership for Gurnah's writing in Tanzania, the first translator of his novels into Swahili, academic Dr Ida Hadjivayanis of theSchool of Oriental and African Studies, has said: "I think if his work could be read in East Africa it would have such an impact. ... We can't change our reading culture overnight, so for him to be read the first steps would be to includeParadise andAfterlives in the school curriculum."[28]
Gurnah edited three and a half volumes ofEssays on African Writing and has published articles on a number of contemporary postcolonial writers, includingV. S. Naipaul,Salman Rushdie, andZoë Wicomb. He is the editor ofA Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press, 2007). From 1987, Gurnah has been a contributing editor ofWasafiri and as of 2021[update] is on the magazine's advisory board.[29][30]
He has been a judge for literary awards, including theCaine Prize for African Writing,[31] theBooker Prize,[32] and theRSL Literature Matters Awards.[33] 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".[34]
In 2006, Gurnah was elected a fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature.[38] In 2007, he won theRFI Témoin du Monde (Witness of the World) award in France forBy the Sea.[39]
On 7October 2021, he was awarded theNobel Prize in Literature for 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects ofcolonialism and the fates of therefugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".[2][3][1] Gurnah was the first Black writer sinceToni Morrison in 1993 to receive it,[3][17] and the first African writer since 2007, whenDoris Lessing was the recipient.[12][40]
As of 2021[update], Gurnah lives inCanterbury, Kent, England,[41] and he has British citizenship.[42] 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."[43]
"Imagining the Postcolonial Writer." In:Reading the 'New' Literatures in a Postcolonial Era. Edited bySusheila Nasta. D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2000.ISBN9780859916011.
^Brook, Annette (10 September 2018)."RSL Literature Matters Awards 2019".Royal Society of Literature. The Royal Society of Literature. Archived fromthe original on 14 August 2020. Retrieved14 October 2021.
^Lewis, Simon (May 2013). "Postmodern Materialism in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Dottie : Intertextuality as Ideological Critique of Englishness".English Studies in Africa.56 (1):39–50.doi:10.1080/00138398.2013.780680.ISSN0013-8398.S2CID145731880.
^Bosman, Sean James (3 July 2021). "'A Fiction to Mock the Cuckold': Reinvigorating the Cliché Figure of the Cuckold in Abdulrazak Gurnah'sBy the Sea (2001) andGravel Heart (2017)".Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies.7 (3):176–188.doi:10.1080/23277408.2020.1849907.ISSN2327-7408.S2CID233624331.
Hand, Felicity (2012). "Becoming Foreign: Tropes of Migrant Identity in Three Novels by Abdulrazak Gurnah". In Sell, Jonathan P. A. (ed.).Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing.Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 39–58.doi:10.1057/9780230358454_3.ISBN978-1-349-33956-3.
King, Bruce (2006). "Abdulrazak Gurnah and Hanif Kureishi: Failed Revolutions". In Acheson, James; Ross, Sarah C.E. (eds.).The Contemporary British Novel Since 1980. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 85–94.doi:10.1007/978-1-349-73717-8_8.ISBN978-1-349-73717-8.OCLC1104713636.
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