The Swedish Academy has announced the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. This year's prestigious award goes to Abdul Razzaq Gurnah, a British novelist of Tanzanian descent. Gurwah has written extensively on the influence and culture of colonialism through his writings.
Gurnah views the consequences of colonialism from a "non-compromising and poetic" perspective. The Swedish Academy has said that they are being given this award for that. Gurnah's mother tongue is Swahili and he writes in English. The Nobel Prize in Literature has always been dominated by European and North American writers. He is the sixth African-born author to receive this world-renowned award. He created love in the minds of people all over the world with his sensitive writing. The academy has praised him for not compromising on the impact of colonialism.
Gurnah was born in 1948 in Zanzibar. After an uprising on an island in the Indian Ocean in 1968, he emigrated to Britain as a teenage refugee. Gurnah recently retired as a professor of post-colonial literature from the University of Kent in the UK. He has written a total of 10 novels on migration. His novel 'Paradise' was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. He wrote 10 novels and several short stories and essays. These include Memory of Departure (1987), Pilgrims Way (1988), Paradise (1994), By the Sea (2001), Desertation (2005), Gravel Heart (2017) and Afterlife (2020).