Nobel Prize for Literature 2021 awarded to Zanzibar-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah

Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Swedish Academy praised Gurnah for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism” as they rewarded him the prize worth 10 million Swedish crowns (£840,000).

Gurnah came to England as a refugee in the late 1960s after being born in Zanzibar in 1948.

The 73-year-old is the author of 10 novels, most notably Paradise and Desertion.

He recently retired as Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at Canterbury’s University of Kent.

Mr Gurnah is the first black African author to have won the award since Wole Soyinka in 1986.