Speakers
- AffiliationNovelist; Professor Emeritus of English and Postcolonial Literatures, University of Kent
- AffiliationClass of 1943 University Professor of English; Chair, Department of English
Details
Presenting the second Africa World Lecture, Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic, known for his novels about the effects of colonialism and displacement in the world.
In 2021, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism.”
He is the first Black writer to receive the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993, and the first African writer since Nadine Gordimer in 1991.
His novels include Memory of Departure (1987), Pilgrims Way (1988), Dottie (1990), Paradise (1994), Admiring Silence (1996), By the Sea (2001), Desertion (2005), The Last Gift (2011), Gravel Heart (2017) and Afterlives (2020).
Short stories include “Cages” (1984), “Bossy” (1994), “Escort” (1996), “The Photograph of the Prince” (2012), “My Mother Lived on a Farm in Africa” (2006), “The Arriver’s Tale” (2016), and “The Stateless Person’s Tale” (2019).
The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Department of English Chair Simon Gikandi, culminating in a Q&A session.
Explore Gurnah's books on his Bloomsbury Books page.