Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abdulrazak Gurnah (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian novelist and academic of Yemeni origin. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

In 2021, Gurnah was awarded 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". On 1 September 2024, Gurnah took up the appointment of the Arts Professor of Literature at New York University Abu Dhabi. He is also Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.

Early life and education

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar. His father and uncle were businessmen who had immigrated from Yemen. He left the island, which later became part of Tanzania, at the age of 18, following the overthrow of the ruling Arab elite in the Zanzibar Revolution, arriving in England in 1968 as a refugee. He is of Arab heritage. 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."

He initially studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded by the University of London. He then moved to the University of Kent, where he earned his PhD with a thesis titled Criteria in the Criticism of West African Fiction, in 1982.