This year’s Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Abdulrazak Gurnah. The jury praised the Tanzanian novelist for his “uncompromising and compassionate treatment of the effects of colonialism and the plight of refugees in the divide between cultures and continents”.
Gurnah was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar. He came to Great Britain in his twenties, where he became a novelist in addition to an academic career. He writes in English. His most famous is his historical novel Paradise 1994, which was nominated for the Booker Prize. It is his only work to be published in translation in the Netherlands.
Last year the prize went to the American poet Louise Glück, only the sixteenth woman of the 118 people who were awarded. Last month her first collection of poetry translated into Dutch was published, averno.
Earlier this week the prizes were awarded for Medicine, Physics and Chemistry. They went respectively to research on sensing touch, climate models and building molecules. The winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in Oslo tomorrow.
Not in Stockholm
The Nobel Prizes are awarded on December 10, the anniversary of the death of founder Alfred Nobel. For the second year in a row, this is not happening in Stockholm because of corona, but the laureates receive their gold medal in their own country.
All prizes are associated with a cash prize of 10 million Swedish kronor, just under a million euros. If a Nobel Prize is awarded to multiple recipients, that amount must be shared.