Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah wins Nobel Literature Prize

Books by Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah are on display at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm after the author was announced as the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature on Oct 7. Photo: AFP

Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose work touches on colonialism and refugee life, on Thursday won the Nobel Literature Prize, the Swedish Academy said.

Gurnah, who grew up on the island of Zanzibar but came to England as a refugee at the end of the 1960s, was honoured "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents," the Swedish Academy said.