Dear Commons Community,

The Nobel Prize in Literature went yesterday to Abdulrazak Gurnah, who left Zanzibar as a refugee in the 1960s and settled in England. He is the first Black writer to win it since Toni Morrison in 1993.

Many of Gurnah’s books focus on the effects of colonialism in East Africa, and on themes of exile and displacement. In 1996, The Times called his novel “Paradise” — about a boy who travels across Africa as an indentured servant — “a shimmering, oblique coming-of-age fable.”

If you haven’t read Gurnah’s books, The Times Book Review has a guide to his best  compiled by Claire Moses

Tony

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