Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah with Nadia Owusu

Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, discusses his latest novel, Afterlives, a sweeping saga of displacement, loss, and love set in early 20th-century East Africa.

The Zanzibari-born, British-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the most recent Nobel Prize in Literature for “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” His powers are on full display in his most recent novel, Afterlives, an intimate account of the fates and fortunes of people grappling with brutal German colonial rule in early 20th-century East Africa. Filled in equal measure with devastation and hope, Afterlives lays bare an underappreciated piece of history, witnessed through the eyes of those who were forced to live it.

Abdlurazak Gurnah speaks with Nadia Owusu about his new book, and his lifelong pursuit of reckoning with the realities of history.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Abdulrazak Gurnah is the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is the author of nine previous novels, including Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize), By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), and Desertion. Born and raised in Zanzibar, he is Professor Emeritus of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent; he lives in Canterbury, England.

Nadia Owusu is a Brooklyn-based writer and urbanist. Her memoir, Aftershocks, was selected as a best book of 2021 by over a dozen publications, including Time, Vogue, Esquire, and the BBC. It was a Malala book club title, a New York Times Editors' Choice pick, and was named one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Nadia is a winner of the 2019 Whiting Award in nonfiction, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure, and elsewhere. 

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Abdulrazak Gurnah © Mark Pringle

Nadia Owusu © Beowulf Sheehan