In the final week before the announcement of this year’s Nobel prize winner in literature, bookmakers were busy speculating who this year’s laureate would be. Among the names mentioned for this honor ranged from writers like Ngugi wa Tiongo of Kenya to British novelist Margaret Atwood and Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. There were two dozens of writers mentioned in between with the odds winning ranging from 1 in 5 to 100 in 5.
And all over a sudden the Nobel Committee came up with a name that had never been mentioned in the bookmakers lists. Abdularazak Gurnah. It was a complete surprise. It was not because the choice was wrong or the writer undeserving. Simply because no one had anticipated that a 72 year-old author from Tanzania, would get the chance to win the Nobel committee members favor. More precisely in the face of other African expectants of the coveted prize like Ngugi wa Tiongo or even Ben Okri who had been expected to win by their fans although the Nobel committee has not taken note.
The choice was not only a surprise. It was also historic for another reason. As it was declared after the news of Gurnah’s win, “This news is historic for many reasons. Gurnah is the first black African writer in 35 years to win the prize since Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka in 1986, the first black writer since US’ Toni Morrison in 1993, and the first African writer since Doris Lessing’s 2007 win.”
Fortunately or unfortunately, the Nobel committee sometimes comes up with surprises while the entire literary world was focused on a few celebrity writers like he British-Indian Salman Rushdie or the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.
For Africa, Gurnah’s choice was rather one of triumph. As Nigerian writer and first African winner of the Nobel prize Wole Soyinka in his e-mail message right after news of this year’s winner was released, the prize has indeed come back to Africa after thirty years. “It so happens that this has been a period of extensive interviews and cultural encounters for me across continents. And my easiest question has always been in relation to the Arts, especially after being obliged to concede the bleak truths over a continent in permanent travail. To be able to respond that the Arts – and literature in particular – are well and thriving, a sturdy flag waved above depressing actualities by a young, confident generation has always made those conversations bearable, even combative. Now, unquestionably, my audiences will find themselves compelled to admit that I do not exaggerate. May the tribe increase!” Soyinka added.
Anyway, the good thing about this year’s Nobel prize in literature is that another African is honored. The bad news might be that another African who was highly anticipated to win the prize is disqualified despite being the favorite for the last many years. Abdulrazak Gurnah has become the 7th African writer to win the most coveted international prize.
According to the press release from the Nobel Committee, “The Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, for his “uncompromising and passionate” portrayals of the effects of colonialism.”
Gurnah was born in Tanzania in 1948 but moved to England at a young age. He has written 10 novels, many of which focus on the refugee experience.
His 1994 novel “Paradise,” which told the story of a boy growing up in Tanzania in the early 20th century, won the Booker Prize and marked his breakthrough as a novelist.
Gurnah’s dedication to truth and his aversion to simplification are striking,” the Nobel Committee for Literature said in the same statement. “This can make him bleak and uncompromising, at the same time as he follows the fates of individuals with great compassion and unbending commitment.”
His 2001 book “By the Sea” follows a refugee living in a British seaside town. And his most recent work, “Afterlives,” picks up the narrative of “Paradise” and takes place during the German colonization of Africa.
His characters “find themselves in a hiatus between cultures and continents, between a life that was and a life emerging; it is an insecure state that can never be resolved,” the committee said.
Prior to his retirement Gurnah, 73, was also a professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent in England.
“I don’t think the acute situation right now in Europe and around the Mediterranean has affected this prize because the phenomenon of exile and migration has been there for many years,” Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel literature committee, told reporters after the award was announced on Thursday.
“But it is quite clear that his writings are extremely interesting and powerful right now in Europe and around the world,” Olsson added. “We are affected by what is happening in the world and it would be very strange otherwise.”
The Nobel committee is often criticized for the surprises it often came up in the past when it chose its winners. It was also criticized for its alleged European bias in the choice of finalists. However the Nobel committee that decides on the final winner are not people who share the same values, ideologies or political inclinations. The committee is alleged to be composed of sometimes eccentric and at other times conservative members that make the final decision. This allegation sometimes looks well-founded if we go by past records.
Authors who were expected to win the prize are sometimes ignored and a less known and less glorious candidate makes the finals. This year’s choice seems to corroborate this allegation. At some time in the past some members or individuals sitting on the committee were said to never endorse someone they did not like personally. The late British novelist Graham Green was repeatedly expected to win the prize but it was alleged someone on the committee opposed his choice for some reason and was quoted as saying that “Mr. Green would win on his grave!”
To take a more recent example, British-Indian author Salman Rushdie was expected to win the prize more than 25 years ago at the time he published “The Satanic Verses”. Yet, the Nobel committee seemed too scared of the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s Fatwa that ordered the killing of the writer and the destruction of his book. Since then, the Nobel committee has ignored Rushdie while he has written so many remarkable novels. He was the victim of the curse of international politics and a Nobel committee that sometimes indulges in politics but fails to defend it principles, the principle of artistic freedom and political neutrality.
Whichever way we look at it, Gurnah has won the Prize for his works that dealt with postcolonial Africa and the fate of displacement of Africans and their settlement in Europe as his own case testifies. he is considered a post-colonial writer who experienced violent displacement and leaving home.
“Gurnah was almost forty years old when he published his first novel, The Memory of Departure (1987), and despite having lived in the UK for many years and having obtained a PhD in literature by then, it appeared to come from a place of having left home. “I was still leaving,” he told Razia Iqbal in an interview only two years ago.
This first novel had, in fact, been completed over a decade ago but was rejected by the Heinemann African Writers series, which, Gurnah later realized, was because his work was not easy to locate as African or British or Diaspora. A few years later, it was his fourth novel, Paradise, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and it was then that Gurnah’s work began penetrating a wider readership and garner critical interest.
Gurnah’s works are not necessarily easy reading, with characters that are often unmoored and weighed down by loss. Protagonists grappling with living on the margins of society, doomed inter-racial love, and a claustrophobic aura of displacement pervades his works. Places are often not named and narrative resolutions are far too few. “
The fact that a post-colonial writer who wrote extensively about post-colonialism has won this year’s prize has something important to indicate politically. This may be taken as a testimony that the post-colonial experiment continues to shape Africa’s destiny as its young people are still flocking to Europe and America despite the dangers inherent in the process of migration and the equally unpleasant consequences for migrants wherever they might be going, Europe, America, the Middle East or elsewhere. This is not however a celebration of migration but a powerful accusation that the post-colonial history of Africa has not yet come to a conclusion and those things are the same now as they were during Gurnah’s early career.
Many African writers, from Nigerian Chinua Achebe to Ghanian Armah have written eloquently about Africa’s colonial and post-colonial experience. However, many of them have focused on the consequences of colonialism and post-colonialism on African societies here at home and a few have dealt with its external repercussions as it uprooted Africans and sent them somewhere else as uprooted people and as victims of post-colonialism in this other direction. Gurnah’s prize can therefore serve as a wakeup call for the new generations of Africans that the post-colonial battles are continuing in a different way along different trajectories.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD OCTOBER 15/2021
