Zanzibar Author Abdulrazak Gurnah Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

(Bloomberg) -- Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the 2021 Nobel Prize in literature.

The Zanzibar-born author won the award for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continent,” the Swedish Academy said in a statement on Thursday.

The writer, who is active in England, U.K., will receive 10 million kronor ($1.1 million) in prize money for his services to literature.

Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. A prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

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