Abdul razak gurnah biography of barack obama

Novelist and Nobel laureate (born )

Abdulrazak Gurnah FRSL (born 20 Dec ) is a Tanzanian-born Nation novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate past it Zanzibar and moved to rendering United Kingdom in the tough as a refugee during honesty Zanzibar Revolution.^[1] His novels incorporate Paradise (), which was shortlisted for both the Booker see the Whitbread Prize; By grandeur Sea (), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Gurnah was awarded magnanimity Nobel Prize in Literature "for his uncompromising and compassionate acuteness of the effects of colonialism and the fates of distinction refugee in the gulf betwixt cultures and continents".^[1][2][3] He crack Emeritus Professor of English obscure Postcolonial Literatures at the Institution of Kent.^[4]

Early life and education

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December ^[5] in the Sultanate of Zanzibar.^[6] He left character island, which later became splitting up of Tanzania, at the interval of 18 following the overpower of the ruling Arab powerful in the Zanzibar Revolution,^[3][1] arrival in England in as top-notch refugee.

He is of Arabian heritage,^[7] and his father delighted uncle were businessmen who difficult immigrated from Yemen.^[8] Gurnah has been quoted saying, "I came to England when these lyric, such as asylum-seeker, were battle-cry quite the same – writer people are struggling and possible from terror states."^[1][9]

He initially feigned at Christ Church College, Town, whose degrees were at illustriousness time awarded by the Foundation of London.^[10] He then influenced to the University of County, where he earned his PhD with a thesis titled Criteria in the Criticism of Westside African Fiction,^[11] in ^[6]

Career

Academia

From colloquium , Gurnah lectured at Bayero University Kano in Nigeria.

Noteworthy then became a professor go along with English and postcolonial literature decompose the University of Kent, whirl location he taught until his retirement^[3][12] in As of ^[update] no problem is professor emeritus of Spin and postcolonial literatures at rank university.^[13]

Fiction

Alongside his work in academe, Gurnah is a creative essayist and novelist.

He is ethics author of many short mythos, essays and novels.^[14] He began writing out of homesickness link with his 20s. He started shrivel writing down thoughts in her majesty diary, which turned into person reflections about home, and long run grew into writing fictional romantic about other people.

This coined a habit of using expressions as a tool to consent and record his experience operate being a refugee, living behave another land and the mouthful of air of being displaced. These beginning stories eventually became Gurnah's principal novel, Memory of Departure (), which he wrote alongside empress Ph.D. dissertation. This first complete set the stage for jurisdiction ongoing exploration of the themes of "the lingering trauma hegemony colonialism, war and displacement" from beginning to end his subsequent novels, short n and critical essays.^[12]

Although Gurnah's novels were received positively by critics, they were not commercially go well and, in some cases, were not published outside the Collective Kingdom.^[15] After he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Data in , publishers and booksellers struggled to keep up colleague the increase in demand tend his work.^[15][16] It was sound until after the Nobel statement that Gurnah received bids let alone American publishers for his newfangled Afterlives, with Riverhead Books declaring it in August ^[17] Riverhead also acquired rights to By the Sea and Desertion, bend in half Gurnah works that had descend out of print.^[16]

While his have control over language is Swahili, he has used English as his donnish language.^[18] However, Gurnah integrates go to wrack and ruin of Swahili, Arabic and European into most of his hand-outs.

He has said that subside had to push back realize publishers to continue this manipulate and they would have prevailing to "italicize or Anglicise Bantu and Arabic references and phrases in his books".^[12] Gurnah has criticised the practices in both British and American publishing delay want to "make the secret seem alien" by marking "foreign" terms and phrases with italics or by putting them hole a glossary.^[12] As academic Hamid Dabashi notes, Gurnah "is unaltered to the manner in which Asian and African migratory put up with diasporic experiences have enriched extra altered English language and creative writings.

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

Consistent themes run owing to Gurnah's writing, including exile, dispossession, belonging, colonialism and broken promises by the state.

Most type his novels tell stories put paid to an idea people living in the thriving world, affected by war application crisis, who may not replica able to tell their rainy stories.^[20][21] Much of Gurnah's gratuitous is set on the glide of East Africa and uncountable of his novels' protagonists were born in Zanzibar.^[23] Though Gurnah has not returned to hold out in Tanzania since he formerly larboard at 18, he has voiced articulate that his homeland "always asserts himself in his imagination, unchanging when he deliberately tries emphasize set his stories elsewhere."^[12]

Literary arbiter Bruce King posits that Gurnah's novels place East African protagonists in their broader international process, observing that in Gurnah's novel "Africans have always been heyday of the larger, changing world".

According to King, Gurnah's code are often uprooted, alienated, unpopular and therefore are, or sense, resentful victims". Felicity Hand suggests that Gurnah's novels Admiring Silence (), By the Sea () and Desertion () all trouble "the alienation and loneliness stroll emigration can produce and rectitude soul-searching questions it gives subject to about fragmented identities swallow the very meaning of 'home'."^[25] She observes that Gurnah's signs typically do not succeed at large following their migration, using witticism and humour to respond pileup their situation.^[26]

Novelist Maaza Mengiste has described Gurnah's works by saying: "He has written work lapse is absolutely unflinching and much at the same time fully compassionate and full of stomach for people of East Continent.

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

Aiming to found the readership for Gurnah's handwriting in Tanzania, the first intermediator of his novels into Bantu, academic Dr Ida Hadjivayanis depose the School of Oriental build up African Studies, has said: "I think if his work could be read in East Continent it would have such chiefly impact.

We can't change bitter reading culture overnight, so weekly him to be read nobleness first steps would be traverse include Paradise and Afterlives acquit yourself the school curriculum."^[27]

Other writing

Gurnah drawing three and a half volumes of Essays on African Writing and has published articles guarantee a number of contemporary postcolonial writers, including V.

S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, and Zoë Wicomb. He is the editor execute A Companion to Salman Rushdie (Cambridge University Press, ). Cause the collapse of , Gurnah has been out contributing editor of Wasafiri turf as of ^[update] is indict the magazine's advisory board.^[28][29]

Other activities

He has been a judge divulge literary awards, including the Caine Prize for African Writing,^[30] loftiness Booker Prize,^[31] and the RSL Literature Matters Awards.^[32] He supports a boycott of Israeli broadening institutions, including publishers and intellectual festivals.

He was an beginning signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions".^[33]

Awards and honours

Gurnah's novel Paradise was shortlisted for the Booker, prestige Whitbread and the Writers' Seat of learning Prizes as well as rectitude ALOA Prize for the eminent Danish translation.^[34] His novel By the Sea () was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,^[34] while Desertion () was shortlisted for the Nation Writers' Prize.^[34][35]

In , Gurnah was elected a fellow of goodness Royal Society of Literature.^[36] Sieve , he won the RFI Témoin du Monde (Witness make stronger the World) award in Author for By the Sea.^[37]

On 7&#;October , he was awarded character Nobel Prize in Literature embody "for his uncompromising and caring penetration of the effects clean and tidy colonialism and the fates explain the refugee in the loch between cultures and continents".^[2][3][1] Gurnah was the first Black man of letters to receive the prize by reason of , when Toni Morrison won it,^[3][16] and the first Person writer since , when Doris Lessing was the recipient.^[12][38]

Personal life

As of ^[update], Gurnah lives dash Canterbury, Kent, England,^[39] and bankruptcy has British citizenship.^[40] He maintains close ties with Tanzania, hoop he still has family very last where he says he goes when he can: "I slime from there.

In my fortitude I live there."^[41]

He is wedded conjugal to Guyanese-born scholar of erudition Denise de Caires Narain.^{[42][43][44][45]}

Writings

Novels

Short stories

• "Cages" (), in African Short Stories, edited by Chinua Achebe abstruse Catherine Lynette Innes, Heinemann Instructive Books.

  ISBN&#;

• "Bossy" (), in African Rhapsody: Short Stories of integrity Contemporary African Experience, edited overtake Nadežda Obradović. Anchor Books. ISBN&#;
• "Escort" (), in Wasafiri, vol. 11, no. 23, 44– doi/
• "The Image of the Prince" (), bargain Road Stories: New Writing Ecstatic by Exhibition Road, edited be oblivious to Mary Morris.

  Royal Borough get ahead Kensington & Chelsea, London. ISBN&#;

• "My Mother Lived on a Stability in Africa" (), in NW The Anthology of New Writing, Volume 14, selected by Lavinia Greenlaw and Helon Habila, London: Granta Books^[60]
• "The Arriver's Tale", break off Refugee Tales, edited by Painter Herd and Anna Pincus (Comma Press, , ISBN&#;)^[61]
• "The Stateless Person's Tale", in Refugee Tales III, edited by David Herd put forward Anna Pincus (Comma Press, , ISBN&#;)^[62]

Non-fiction: essays and criticism

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

  22, no. 4, Indiana University Press, , pp. – JSTOR&#;

• "Imagining prestige Postcolonial Writer." In: Reading blue blood the gentry 'New' Literatures in a Postcolonial Era. Edited by Susheila Nasta. D. S. Brewer, Cambridge, ISBN&#;
• "The Wood of the Moon." In: Transition, no. 88, Indiana Home Press, Hutchins Center for Somebody and African American Research urge Harvard University, , pp.

  88– JSTOR&#;

• "Themes and Structures in Midnight's Children". In: The Cambridge Buddy to Salman Rushdie. Edited get by without Abdulrazak Gurnah. Cambridge University Keep, ISBN&#;^[63]
• "Mid Morning Moon". In: Wasafiri (3 May ), vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 25– doi/
• Abdulrazak Gurnah (July ).

  "The Implore to Nowhere: Wicomb and Cosmopolitanism". Safundi. 12 (3–4): – doi/ ISSN&#; Wikidata&#;Q

• "Learning to Read". In: Matatu, no. 46, , pp. 23–32,

As editor

References

Sources

Further reading

• Breitinger, Eckhard.

  "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S". Contemporary Novelists.

• Jones, Nisha (). "Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation". Wasafiri, , 37– doi/
• Palmisano, Joseph M., get a fright. (). "Gurnah, Abdulrazak S.". Contemporary Authors. Vol.&#; Gale. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;. ISSN&#; OCLC&#;
• Whyte, Philip ().

  "East Africa in Postcolonial Fiction: Earth and Stories in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise". In Noack, Stefan; Christine de Gemeaux; Uwe Puschner (eds.). Deutsch-Ostafrika: Dynamiken europäischer Kulturkontakte show Erfahrungshorizonte im kolonialen Raum. Tool Lang. ISBN&#;.

• Whyte, Philip (). "Heritage as Nightmare: The Novels defer to Abdulrazak Gurnah", in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies 27, no.

  –

External links