This archive report was first published on 7 October 2021.
On October 7, 2021, the Swedish Academy announced that Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah had won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Gurnah, born in 1948, grew up on the island of Zanzibar but moved to England as a refugee in the late 1960s. He began writing at the age of 21 and has since published 10 novels and numerous short stories.
His work often explores the theme of the refugee's disruption, as seen in his 1994 novel 'Paradise', which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.
The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded by the Swedish Academy and comes with a prize of 10 million Swedish crowns, equivalent to $1.14 million or Sh125 million.
Established in 1901, the prize has been awarded to 118 literature laureates, with 95 of them being Europeans or North Americans. However, the Swedish Academy has made a pledge to increase diversity in the prize, and Gurnah's win marks a significant step towards this goal.
As the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, Gurnah's work is expected to receive increased attention, potentially leading to a surge in book sales and introducing him to a broader international audience.
- Reporting by Reuters and AFP.
