At 18, Abdulrazak Gurnah arrived in England as a refugee from the Zanzibar Revolution. Receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature more than 50 years later, he reflected that the "prolonged period of poverty and alienation" he experienced made him a writer.
From the contemporary immigrant experience in his debut, memory of departure, to colonial wartime conscription in Booker Prize shortlisted Paradise, Abdukrazak's unflinching yet humane oeurve interrogates the legacies of empire, centring that which is often too marginalised.
Listen as he and writer Sisonke Msimang discuss his tenth novel, Afterlives - an intergenerational portriated of love and loss under German occupation in East Africa.
About the author:
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. He is the author of ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize), The Last Gift, Gravel Heart and Afterlives, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2021 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. He was Professor of English at the University of Kent and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury, UK.
Hosted by Sisonke Msimang
Sisonke Msimang is the author of two books: Always Another Country: a memoir of exile and home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018). She also has written for a range of publications including The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian and Newsweek.
