Abdulrazak Gurnah who is a novelist from Zanzibar has become the first winner of the ‘literary’ award for highlighting the effects of colonialism and the fate of refugees in the gulf between cultures and continents.
The award was presented by the Swiss Nobel Institute and is valued at 10 million Swiss crowns equivalent to $ 1.14 million.
Gurnah, who was born in Zanzibar in 1948, arrived in England as a refugee in the late 1960s.
He is the author of 10 novels and several short stories. He was a Professor of English and post-independence literature at the University of Kent, Canterbury, until his retirement.
Gurnah, 73, is the author of 10 novels, including Paradise and Desertion.
Paradise, a novel published in 1994, tells the story of a young man who grew up in Tanzania in the early 20th century and won the Authorship of the Book Award, an achievement he had achieved as a novelist.
"Abdulrazak Gurnah's commitment to the truth and a love of simplicity is a fascinating and exciting thing," the Nobel Committee on Literature said in a statement.
"His novels highlighted the beginnings of racist definitions of racism and exposed open-minded East Africa, which many in other parts of the world are unaware of."
"Its characters find themselves in a state of confusion because between cultures and continents, between past lives and emerging lives, it is a state of insecurity that cannot be solved."
