Abdul Razak Kurna receives the Nobel Prize for Literature in London

Published: 06/12/2021 – 07:31

Abdul Razak Qurna Receives Monday, December 6th, Nobel Prize The Zanzibar-born novelist was honored at a ceremony in the United Kingdom for more than half a century for his stories on the most valuable literary award, immigration and colonialism.

This is the second year in a row that the Nobel Prize in Epidemiology has been awarded in the countries of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In London, Abdul Razak Kourna will receive his medal and diploma from the Swedish Ambassador at his official residence in the afternoon. The prize was 10 million Swedish kronor (approximately 1 million euros).

Abdul Razak Kurna, 72, is the first writer of African descent to win the Nobel Prize for Literature since JM Kotzi of South Africa in 2003. For his accounts of colonial and post-colonial periods in East Africa And the suffering of refugees between the two worlds.

The panel praised the “sympathetic and uncompromising account of the effects of colonialism and the fate of refugees across cultures and continents.” He praised the “adherence to the truth and the hatred of simplification.”

Born in Zanzibar in 1948 – an archipelago off the coast of East Africa that is now part of Tanzania – Abdul Razak Kurna fled to England in the late 1960s, a few years after the independence of this former British defender, during the Arabian period. The community was persecuted.

He began writing in the United Kingdom at the age of 21, where he acquired his nationality and was inspired by his memories and his emigrant experience. “I like to write about human relationships, what people do when they are rebuilding their lives,” he told a news conference the day after he was dedicated in early October.

“Fell” in writing

In a 2004 column in the British daily The Guardian, he unexpectedly explained that he had “fallen” in writing. And he did not see the highest reward coming: “You write as best you can, and you believe it will work!”

The author, who was sometimes unrecognized before the Nobel Prize, has published ten novels, three of which have been translated into French (“Paradise”, “Pres de la Mer” and “Adio Zanzibar”), as well as several short stories. He writes in English even though his original language is primarily Swahili.

He now lives in Brighton, in the southeast of England, and taught literature at the University of Kent until his retirement.

Nobel Prize Or not, he promised that the novelist would continue to speak openly about the issues that shaped his works and his view of the world. “This is my way of speaking,” he said.

He considers the harsh course of European governments on immigration from Africa and the Middle East to be cruel and unjust.

His latest book, Afterlife, follows a boy who was stolen from his parents by German colonial troops and returns to his village to find his missing parents and sister.

2021 is a prosperous year for African literature, with three major prizes – the Nobel, the Booker Prize and the Concord – won by African writers.

With AFP