Paradise: A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021

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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. ISSN 0013-8398. S2CID 145731880. Domini, John (8 December 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah's Afterlives". The Brooklyn Rail . Retrieved 15 August 2023. One of my favourites is Gurnah’s latest novel ‘Afterlives’ (2020), which has many affinities with his fourth, breakthrough novel, ‘Paradise’ (1994), and takes place during the German colonisation of East Africa in the beginning of the 20th century and thereafter. In both cases Gurnah gives us a lucid history lesson in the form of a captivating story of individual lives. His way of doing this is to filter the brutality of events through young and vulnerable protagonists with limited consciousness of reality. In the breaking up of Arab hegemony in the coastal region of East Africa we follow the dramatic fates of the orphaned youngsters Ilyas, Afiya and Hamza. Ilyas escapes his servitude under an Arab slave holder only to be kidnapped by the German forces as one of their native soldiers (askaris). Even Hamza is owned by a merchant in a caravan only to volunteer as a German askari, where he becomes dependent on an officer who sexually exploits him. The capricious winds of history rule, and the fates of the trio are very different. Gurnah’s style is wonderfully clear and nuanced, but he can also be sarcastic and hilarious in a deadpan way. One of the finest moments in this novel is the delicately written love story of Hamza and Ilyas’ sister Afyia, a variation on Pyramus and Thisbe. The last word however must be terrible, when the Nazi engagement of Ilyas is revealed, and the denouement of ‘Afterlives’ is just as unexpected as it is alarming. If Hamza is saved, Ilyas is not. What happens to him I will let the reader find out.

Imagining the Postcolonial Writer." In: Reading the 'New' Literatures in a Postcolonial Era. Edited by Susheila Nasta. D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2000. ISBN 9780859916011. Kaigai, Kimani (May 2013). "At the Margins: Silences in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Admiring Silence and The Last Gift". English Studies in Africa. 56 (1): 128–140. doi: 10.1080/00138398.2013.780688. ISSN 0013-8398. S2CID 143867462. Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah Urges Us Not to Forget the Past". Time. 10 January 2022 . Retrieved 15 August 2023. It’s not always asylum seeking, it can be so many reasons, it can be trade, it can be commerce, it can be education, it can be love,” she said. “The first of his novels I took on at Bloomsbury is called By the Sea, and there’s this haunting image of a man at Heathrow airport with a carved incense box, and that’s all he has. He arrives, and he says one word, and that’s ‘asylum’.”

The Arriver's Tale", in Refugee Tales, edited by David Herd and Anna Pincus ( Comma Press, 2016, ISBN 9781910974230) [61] Jones, Nisha (2005). "Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation". Wasafiri, 20:46, 37–42. doi: 10.1080/02690050508589982.

Prono, Luca (2005). "Abdulrazak Gurnah – Literature". British Council. Archived from the original on 3 August 2019 . Retrieved 7 October 2021. a b "Abdulrazak Gurnah". Booker Prize. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021 . Retrieved 7 October 2021. Fruchon-Toussaint, Catherine (8 March 2007). "Abdulrazak Gurnah, Prix RFI Témoin du Monde 2007". RFI (in French). Archived from the original on 14 March 2021 . Retrieved 8 October 2021. Gurnah was awarded the 2021 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". [1] [2] [3] He is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent. [4] Early life and education [ edit ] I thought it was a prank,” he said. “These things are usually floated for weeks beforehand, or sometimes months beforehand, about who are the runners, so it was not something that was in my mind at all. I was just thinking, I wonder who’ll get it?”

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Lavery, Charné (May 2013). "White-washed Minarets and Slimy Gutters: Abdulrazak Gurnah, Narrative Form and Indian Ocean Space". English Studies in Africa. 56 (1): 117–127. doi: 10.1080/00138398.2013.780686. ISSN 0013-8398. S2CID 143927840. Mengiste, Maaza (8 October 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah: where to start with the Nobel prize winner". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 9 October 2021 . Retrieved 9 October 2021.

Refugee Tales: Volume III – Comma Press". commapress.co.uk. Archived from the original on 10 May 2021 . Retrieved 7 October 2021. Palmisano, Joseph M., ed. (2007). "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S.". Contemporary Authors. Vol.153. Gale. pp. 134–136. ISBN 978-1-4144-1017-3. ISSN 0275-7176. OCLC 507351992. Gurnah’s fourth novel, Paradise, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994, and his sixth, By the Sea, was longlisted in 2001. Olsson said that Paradise “has obvious reference to Joseph Conrad in its portrayal of the innocent young hero Yusuf’s journey to the heart of darkness”. a b c d e Flood, Alison (7 October 2021). "Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the 2021 Nobel prize in literature". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021 . Retrieved 7 October 2021. a b "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021". NobelPrize.org. 7 October 2021. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021 . Retrieved 7 October 2021.

Gurnah was born in 1948, growing up in Zanzibar. When Zanzibar went through a revolution in 1964, citizens of Arab origin were persecuted, and Gurnah was forced to flee the country when he was 18. He began to write as a 21-year-old refugee in England, choosing to write in English, although Swahili is his first language. His first novel, Memory of Departure, was published in 1987. He has until recently been professor of English and postcolonial literatures at the University of Kent, until his retirement. In 2006 Gurnah was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [35] In 2007 he won the RFI Témoin du Monde (Witness of the world) award in France for By the Sea. [36] a b "Nobel Prize in Literature 2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah honoured". The Irish Times. 7 October 2021. Archived from the original on 7 October 2021 . Retrieved 7 October 2021. We Congratulate 2021 Nobel Laureate for Literature Abdulrazak Gurnah". The Authors Guild. 7 October 2021 . Retrieved 14 October 2021.