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Abdul Razak of Tanzania won the Nobel Prize in Literature

Abdul Razak Gurnah of Tanzania won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. On Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced his name as the Nobel laureate.

He received the award for his fourth novel, Paradise.

According to the British media Guardian, Abdul Rajak Gurnah’s uncompromising and sympathetic writings tell the story of the misery of colonialism and the hardships of refugee life.

Abdul Razak Gurnah was born in 1948 on the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar. He immigrated to England as a refugee in the late 1970’s. So far this Tanzanian writer has written 10 novels and a few short stories. The repercussions of the lives of the refugees are reflected in his writings.

The Nobel Prize comes with a medal and a prize sum of 10 million Swedish kronor (about 980,000 euros, $1.1 million).

Last year, the award went to US poet Louise Gluck.

Ahead of Thursday’s announcement, Nobel watchers had suggested the Swedish Academy could choose to give the nod to a writer from Asia or Africa, following a pledge to make the prize more diverse.

It has crowned mainly Westerners in its 120-year existence.

Of the 118 literature laureates since the first Nobel was awarded in 1901, 95 — or more than 80 per cent — have been Europeans or North Americans.

Gurnah would have normally received the Nobel from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.

But the in-person ceremony has been cancelled for the second straight year due to the pandemic and replaced with a televised ceremony showing the laureates receiving their awards in their home countries.

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