Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 Nobel literature winner, immerses the reader in the stories of people whose lives are flung into turmoil, reflecting his own displacement from Tanzania to the United Kingdom in the 1960s.

His last novel Afterlives (Hiernamaals in Dutch), tells the story of Ilyas, a child stolen from his parents in east Africa by German colonial soldiers, and his quest to find his family after years spent away from home fighting against his own people. He reunites with his sister Afiya, whose life has become intertwined with Hamza, another young man recently returned from war.

But another conflict looms on the horizon, threatening to splinter these new relationships just as they begin.

Gurnah presents a vital African narrative of German colonial rule in novels which address the great inter-generational harm of colonization, while at the same time mesmerizing readers with deft storytelling and complex, empathetic characters.