Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah awarded Nobel literature prize

UK-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for works that explore the legacies of imperialism on uprooted individuals.

The Swedish Academy says the award is in recognition of his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

Born on Zanzibar in 1948, Gurnah moved to Britain as a teenage refugee after an uprising on the Indian Ocean island in 1968. Recently retired as a professor of post-colonial literature at the University of Kent, he is the author of 10 novels, including “Paradise,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994, “BY the Sea” and “Desertion.”

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for literature, calls him “one of the world’s most prominent post-colonial writers.”