Salman Rushdie congratulates Abdulrazak Gurnah on Nobel Prize win | Read his message

After Tanzanian professor, and author of ‘uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee’ Abdulrazak Gurnah, was announced as the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie took to his official Twitter handle to congratulate the latter with a heartfelt message. On Thursday, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences took to its Twitter handle to declare the selection of the Nobel Prize for Literature in a news conference. Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah received the award “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” 

Rushdie, meanwhile, in a Twitter post said that some years ago, Abdulrazak Gurnah had assisted in editing a Cambridge Companion for him. While he said he was “grateful” to Abdulrazak Gurnah at the time, the author added that Gurnah has “only gone and won the Nobel Prize.” Rushdie then went on to add: “Many congratulations.” 

Who is Abdulrazak Gurnah?

Gurnah was born on one of Zanzibar's islands and came to England as a refugee in the 1960s. Following the peaceful liberation from the UK’s colonial rule in December 1963, when Zanzibar went through a revolution under the regime of President Abeid Karume, it led to the oppression and persecution of citizens of Arab origin. However, Gurnah belonged to the victimized ethnic group and was forced to leave his family and his country, which was called the Republic of Tanzania. He was unable to return to Zanzibar until 1984. 

He began writing about his experiences as a refugee when he was 21 years old and lived in exile in England. The identity and self-image of his itinerant characters are central to his representation of the refugee experience, in his works. Despite the fact that Swahili was his native tongue, English became his literary weapon. The characters in his works are more frequently based in Tanzania. While his writing dates back to his exile period, Gurnah's works are about his relationship with the place he left behind — his country of Zanzibar, Tanzania. The 73-year-old author of 10 novels including well-renowned works such as ‘Paradise’ and ‘Desertion,’ received 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.14m / £840,000).