2021 Nobel Prize winner is visiting Keele

11th December 2024 6-7pm 

Renowned novelist and academic Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature will be giving a public reading from his work at Keele University. 

Gurnah, who became the first black African writer in 35 years to win the prestigious award, will also spend time with the University’s Creative Writing students during the visit on December 11th, which is being held as part of Keele’s 75th anniversary celebrations. 

The author of 10 novels, Tanzanian-born Gurnah, aged 75, was praised by the Swedish Academy – the body responsible for selecting the Nobel Prize laureates - for his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” 

The effects of colonialism, the refugee experience, and displacement in the world run throughout Gurnah's work, which has touched millions worldwide. His fourth novel, Paradise, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.  

Gurnah grew up on the island of Zanzibar, but in the 1960s oppression and persecution of citizens of Arab origin forced him to leave the country as a teenager. Eventually he settled in England, where he studied and went on to become professor of English and postcolonial literatures at the University of Kent, having completed his PHD there in 1982. 

Professor Mariangela Palladino, Dean of Research in Keele’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, said: “We’re excited to welcome Nobel Prize laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah to Keele and Staffordshire as part of the University’s 75th anniversary celebrations. Abdulrazak Gurnah's writing focuses on the legacies of colonialism, the experiences of migration, the trauma of leaving home, the displacement experienced on arrival. His writing takes us across continents, and Zanzibar - his country of origin - often features in his work.  

“For decades, Keele University's literature programmes featured works from Anglophone postcolonial and world literary cultures. Our students of English, American Literatures and Creative Writing have studied texts dealing with the aftermath of decolonisation, slavery, the relationship between gender and nationalism and postcolonial national narratives. This event will be a unique and fantastic experience for our students to meet Gurnah, and learn first-hand from such a brilliant and eminent writer.”  

The talk, which also includes a Q&A session, takes place between 6pm and 7pm in Westminster Theatre, located inside the Chancellor’s building, followed by a book signing.

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Book event