Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian novelist who lives and works in the United Kingdom. He was born in Zanzibar, and initially studied at the Christ Church College, Canterbury. He was among those who entered the united Kingdom as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution.
In 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah won 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.” This makes him the first Tanzanian writer to win the prize, and the first Black Writer to win since Toni Morrison in 1993. Wole Soyinka was the last African Black writer to win the prize in 1986.
In addition to a host of classic novels written by our Nobel Prize winner, he has won other several awards.
