25 Facts About Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution.

Abdulrazak Gurnah's novels include Paradise, which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea, which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Abdulrazak Gurnah is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar.

Abdulrazak Gurnah 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.

Abdulrazak Gurnah is of Arab heritage, and his father and uncle were businessmen who had immigrated from Yemen.

Abdulrazak Gurnah initially studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded by the University of London.

Abdulrazak Gurnah 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.

From 1980 to 1983, Abdulrazak Gurnah lectured at Bayero University Kano in Nigeria.

Abdulrazak Gurnah then became a professor of English and postcolonial literature at the University of Kent, where he taught until his retirement in 2017.

Alongside his work in academia, Abdulrazak Gurnah is a creative writer and novelist.

Abdulrazak Gurnah is the author of many short stories, essays and novels.

Abdulrazak Gurnah began writing out of homesickness in his 20s.

Abdulrazak Gurnah started with writing down thoughts in his diary, which turned into longer reflections about home, and eventually grew into writing fictional stories about other people.

Abdulrazak Gurnah has said that he had to push back against publishers to continue this practice and they would have preferred to "italicize or Anglicise Swahili and Arabic references and phrases in his books".

Abdulrazak Gurnah has criticised the practices in both British and American publishing that want to "make the alien seem alien" by marking "foreign" terms and phrases with italics or by putting them in a glossary.

Consistent themes run through Abdulrazak Gurnah's writing, including exile, displacement, belonging, colonialism and broken promises by the state.

Much of Abdulrazak Gurnah's work is set on the coast of East Africa and many of his novels' protagonists were born in Zanzibar.

Abdulrazak Gurnah is the editor of A Companion to Salman Rushdie.

From 1987, Abdulrazak Gurnah has been a contributing editor of Wasafiri and as of 2021 is on the magazine's advisory board.

Abdulrazak Gurnah has been a judge for literary awards, including the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Booker Prize, and the RSL Literature Matters Awards.

Abdulrazak Gurnah was an original signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions".

In 2006, Abdulrazak Gurnah was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Abdulrazak Gurnah was the first Black writer to receive the prize since 1993, when Toni Morrison won it, and the first African writer since 2007, when Doris Lessing was the recipient.

Abdulrazak Gurnah is married to Guyanese-born scholar of literature Denise de Caires Narain.