Why Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel Prize for Literature is important

The Swedes have succeeded once again in surprising everyone with a stealthy pick for this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Abdulrazak Gurnah (b 1948) was announced as the winner this year and he is only the sixth writer from the African continent to receive this prestigious prize. For cynics, gamblers, bookworms and African literature connoisseurs, this news comes like a breath of fresh air. Gurnah’s own surprise at having received the prize illustrates just how little love is given to vast, diverse and dazzling range of literature from Africa.

In fact, this will be Nobel prize magic at its best: suddenly, a relatively unknown novelist will become a household name and Gurnah’s books, which are difficult to access outside of the UK and East Africa, will sell widely.

Gurnah will be celebrated as a Tanzanian writer and thus it is imperative to immediately highlight his tangled and complex identity. Gurnah is really from Zanzibar, an autonomous group of islands in the Indian ocean, which merged with the mainland upon independence from the British in the sixties under the name Tanzania.

However, relationship with the mainland has always been culturally and politically fraught, and Gurnah has admitted that he moved to the UK in the sixties…

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