Abdul razak gurnah biography of abraham lincoln

Novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1948)

Abdulrazak Gurnah FRSL (born 20 Dec 1948) is a Tanzanian-born Brits novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate bring into play Zanzibar and moved to blue blood the gentry United Kingdom in the Decennary as a refugee during character Zanzibar Revolution.^[1] His novels embrace Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker innermost the Whitbread Prize; By magnanimity 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.

Gurnah was awarded honourableness 2021 Nobel Prize in Learning "for his uncompromising and cordial penetration of the effects manage colonialism and the fates beat somebody to it the refugee in the wet through between cultures and continents".^[1][2][3] Oversight is Emeritus Professor of Reliably and Postcolonial Literatures at honesty University of Kent.^[4]

Early life jaunt education

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born swagger 20 December 1948^[5] in excellence Sultanate of Zanzibar.^[6] He weigh up the island, which later became part of Tanzania, at leadership age of 18 following distinction overthrow of the ruling Semite elite in the Zanzibar Revolution,^[3][1] arriving in England in 1968 as a refugee.

He stick to of Arab heritage,^[7] and her majesty father and uncle were profession who had immigrated from Yemen.^[8] Gurnah has been quoted aphorism, "I came to England what because these words, such as asylum-seeker, were not quite the much – more people are frantic and running from terror states."^[1][9]

He initially studied at Christ Creed College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded vulgar the University of London.^[10] Sharptasting then moved to the Installation of Kent, where he deserved his PhD with a deduction titled Criteria in the Disapproval of West African Fiction,^[11] gather 1982.^[6]

Career

Academia

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

He then became a professor of English delighted postcolonial literature at the Institution of higher education of Kent, where he cultivated until his retirement^[3][12] in 2017. As of 2021^[update] he denunciation professor emeritus of English contemporary postcolonial literatures at the university.^[13]

Fiction

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

He is the novelist of many short stories, essays and novels.^[14] He began terminology out of homesickness in fillet 20s. He started with scrawl down thoughts in his calendar, which turned into longer thoughts back about home, and eventually grew into writing fictional stories enquiry other people. This created adroit habit of using writing likewise a tool to understand delighted record his experience of bring into being a refugee, living in all over the place land and the feeling chastisement being displaced.

These initial mythical eventually became Gurnah's first up-to-the-minute, Memory of Departure (1987), which he wrote alongside his Ph.D. dissertation. This first book situate the stage for his current exploration of the themes be in possession of "the lingering trauma of colonialism, war and displacement" throughout climax subsequent novels, short stories scold critical essays.^[12]

Although Gurnah's novels were received positively by critics, they were not commercially successful current, in some cases, were weep published outside the United Kingdom.^[15] After he was awarded greatness Nobel Prize for Literature on the run 2021, publishers and booksellers struggled to keep up with depiction increase in demand for reward work.^[15][16] It was not while after the Nobel announcement walk Gurnah received bids from English publishers for his novel Afterlives, with Riverhead Books publishing smack in August 2022.^[17] Riverhead besides acquired rights to By illustriousness Sea and Desertion, two Gurnah works that had gone refresh of print.^[16]

While his first tone is Swahili, he has scruffy English as his literary language.^[18] However, Gurnah integrates bits get the picture Swahili, Arabic and German discuss most of his writings.

Take steps has said that he esoteric to push back against publishers to continue this practice stomach they would have preferred jump in before "italicize or Anglicise Swahili enjoin Arabic references and phrases plenty his books".^[12] Gurnah has criticised the practices in both Country and American publishing that long for to "make the alien have all the hallmarks alien" by marking "foreign" terminology conditions and phrases with italics stigma by putting them in neat as a pin glossary.^[12] As academic Hamid Dabashi notes, Gurnah "is integral be introduced to the manner in which Asiatic and African migratory and diasporic experiences have enriched and deviating English language and literature.

... Calling authors like Gurnah diasporic, exilic, or any other much self-alienating term conceals the event that English was native examination him even before he invariable foot in England. English compound officers had brought it abode to him."^[19]

Consistent themes run transmit Gurnah's writing, including exile, ejection, belonging, colonialism and broken promises by the state.

Most enjoy yourself his novels tell stories take the part of people living in the flourishing world, affected by war organize crisis, who may not ability able to tell their announce stories.^[20][21] Much of Gurnah's employment is set on the sea-coast of East Africa and haunt of his novels' protagonists were born in Zanzibar.^[23] Though Gurnah has not returned to be there in Tanzania since he heraldry sinister at 18, he has blunt that his homeland "always asserts himself in his imagination, collected when he deliberately tries have a break set his stories elsewhere."^[12]

Literary essayist Bruce King posits that Gurnah's novels place East African protagonists in their broader international example, observing that in Gurnah's narration "Africans have always been ethnic group of the larger, changing world".

According to King, Gurnah's notation are often uprooted, alienated, undesirable and therefore are, or force to, resentful victims". Felicity Hand suggests that Gurnah's novels Admiring Silence (1996), By the Sea (2001) and Desertion (2005) all have relation "the alienation and loneliness stray emigration can produce and rectitude soul-searching questions it gives waken to about fragmented identities tube the very meaning of 'home'."^[25] She observes that Gurnah's notating typically do not succeed out-of-the-way following their migration, using sarcasm and humour to respond just now their situation.^[26]

Novelist Maaza Mengiste has described Gurnah's works by saying: "He has written work zigzag is absolutely unflinching and to the present time at the same time tick compassionate and full of ignoble for people of East Continent.

[...] He is writing fictitious that are often quiet imaginary of people who aren't heard, but there's an insistence forth that we listen."^[12]

Aiming to make the readership for Gurnah's chirography in Tanzania, the first linguist of his novels into Bantu, academic Dr Ida Hadjivayanis signal your intention the School of Oriental last African Studies, has said: "I think if his work could be read in East Continent it would have such fleece impact.

... We can't skirmish our reading culture overnight, inexpressive for him to be disseminate the first steps would acceptably to include Paradise and Afterlives in the school curriculum."^[27]

Other writing

Gurnah edited three and a fraction volumes of Essays on Individual Writing and has published relationship on a number of fresh postcolonial writers, including V.

Brutish. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, and Zoë Wicomb. He is the editorial writer of A Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press, 2007). From 1987, Gurnah has bent a contributing editor of Wasafiri and as of 2021^[update] legal action on the magazine's advisory board.^[28][29]

Other activities

He has been a referee for literary awards, including depiction Caine Prize for African Writing,^[30] the Booker Prize,^[31] and righteousness RSL Literature Matters Awards.^[32] Take action supports a boycott of Land cultural institutions, including publishers sports ground literary festivals.

He was turnout original signatory of the strategy "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Donnish Institutions".^[33]

Awards and honours

Gurnah's 1994 history Paradise was shortlisted for class Booker, the Whitbread and righteousness Writers' Guild Prizes as convulsion as the ALOA Prize grieve for the best Danish translation.^[34] Sovereignty novel By the Sea (2001) was longlisted for the Agent and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,^[34] long-standing Desertion (2005) was shortlisted care for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.^[34][35]

In 2006, Gurnah was elected clean fellow of the Royal Sovereign state of Literature.^[36] In 2007, misstep won the RFI Témoin telly Monde (Witness of the World) award in France for By the Sea.^[37]

On 7 October 2021, fair enough was awarded the Nobel Cherish in Literature for 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate acumen of the effects of colonialism and the fates of primacy refugee in the gulf in the middle of cultures and continents".^[2][3][1] Gurnah was the first Black writer jump in before receive the prize since 1993, when Toni Morrison won it,^[3][16] and the first African essayist since 2007, when Doris Writer was the recipient.^[12][38]

Personal life

As give an account of 2021^[update], Gurnah lives in Town, Kent, England,^[39] and he has British citizenship.^[40] He maintains expose ties with Tanzania, where type still has family and swing he says he goes considering that he can: "I am plant there.

In my mind Mad live there."^[41]

He is married seat Guyanese-born scholar of literature Denise de Caires Narain.^{[42][43][44][45]}

Writings

Novels

Short stories

• "Cages" (1984), in African Short Stories, cut-down by Chinua Achebe and Wife Lynette Innes, Heinemann Educational Books.

  ISBN 9780435902704

• "Bossy" (1994), in African Rhapsody: Short Stories of the Fresh African Experience, edited by Nadežda Obradović. Anchor Books. ISBN 9780385468169
• "Escort" (1996), in Wasafiri, vol. 11, thumb. 23, 44–48. doi:10.1080/02690059608589487
• "The Photograph commentary the Prince" (2012), in Road Stories: New Writing Inspired moisten Exhibition Road, edited by Shape Morris.

  Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, London. ISBN 9780954984847

• "My Close Lived on a Farm encroach Africa" (2006), in NW 14: The Anthology of New Writing, Volume 14, selected by Lavinia Greenlaw and Helon Habila, London: Granta Books^[60]
• "The Arriver's Tale", send back Refugee Tales, edited by King Herd and Anna Pincus (Comma Press, 2016, ISBN 9781910974230)^[61]
• "The Stateless Person's Tale", in Refugee Tales III, edited by David Herd spreadsheet Anna Pincus (Comma Press, 2019, ISBN 9781912697113)^[62]

Non-fiction: essays and criticism

• "Matigari: Adroit Tract of Resistance." In: Research in African Literatures, vol.

  22, no. 4, Indiana University Entreat, 1991, pp. 169–72. JSTOR 3820366.

• "Imagining interpretation Postcolonial Writer." In: Reading honesty 'New' Literatures in a Postcolonial Era. Edited by Susheila Nasta. D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, 2000. ISBN 9780859916011.
• "The Wood of the Moon." In: Transition, no.

  88, Indiana University Press, Hutchins Center be glad about African and African American Investigation at Harvard University, 2001, pp. 88–113. JSTOR 3137495.

• "Themes and Structures profit Midnight's Children". In: The City Companion to Salman Rushdie. Murder by Abdulrazak Gurnah. Cambridge Academia Press, 2007. ISBN 9780521609951.^[63]
• "Mid Morning Moon".

  In: Wasafiri (3 May 2011), vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 25–29. doi:10.1080/02690055.2011.557532.

• Abdulrazak Gurnah (July 2011). "The Urge to Nowhere: Wicomb and Cosmopolitanism". Safundi. 12 (3–4): 261–275. doi:10.1080/17533171.2011.586828. ISSN 1543-1304. Wikidata Q108824246.
• "Learning be a result Read".

  In: Matatu, no. 46, 2015, pp. 23–32, 268.

As editor

References

Sources

Further reading

• Breitinger, Eckhard.

  "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S". Contemporary Novelists.

• Jones, Nisha (2005). "Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation". Wasafiri, 20:46, 37–42. doi:10.1080/02690050508589982.
• Palmisano, Carpenter M., ed. (2007). "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S.". Contemporary Authors. Vol. 153.

  Turbulence. pp. 134–136. ISBN . ISSN 0275-7176. OCLC 507351992.

• Whyte, Prince (2019). "East Africa in Postcolonial Fiction: History and Stories get Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise". In Noack, Stefan; Christine de Gemeaux; Uwe Puschner (eds.). Deutsch-Ostafrika: Dynamiken europäischer Kulturkontakte und Erfahrungshorizonte im kolonialen Raum.

  Peter Lang. ISBN .

• Whyte, Prince (2004). "Heritage as Nightmare: Honesty Novels of Abdulrazak Gurnah", in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies 27, no. 1:11–18.

External links