Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah became the first African to be awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature following his win on Thursday.
The author, known for his novel Paradise, was awarded for “his empathetic and uncompromising penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of refugees in the gulf, caught between cultures and continents,” according to the jury on Reuters’ live.
Gurnah mostly writes about refugee’s disruption, since he also moved to England as a refugee by the end of the 1960s.
Today’s Nobel prize was given to a novelist, last year, the American poet Louise Gluck who was awarded for the clarity of her poems.
Gluck’s poetry is more into the painful reality of being human, dealing with themes such as death, childhood, and family life, according to BBC news.
Literature past winners were not only novelists, they were also poets, short fiction, history, essays, biography, lyrics, or journalism writers winners, including poets Pablo Neruda, Joseph Brodsky, and Rabindranath Tagore, and writers like Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell for his philosophy, and Bob Dylan for his lyrics.
The literature award is the fourth to take place this week, after the chemistry award that was gifted to the duo German Benjamin List and Scottish-born David MacMillan, following their development of organic catalysts that are both environmentally friendly and cheap to produce, as well as medicine American winners David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian following their discovery of receptors in the skin that sense temperature and touch, and physics trio winners Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi for their work in understanding climate change.
Today’s Nobel prize in literature will be followed in the coming days by awards for peace and economics.
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