Abdulrazak Gurnah wins 2021 Nobel prize in Literature

Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah has won this year’s Nobel prize in Literature, for what the awards committee called his ‘uncompromising and passionate’ works on the effects of colonialism.

Gurnah has been based in the UK since the 1960s, when he arrived as a student after fleeing persecution in his native Zanzibar.

He has published 10 novels as well as a number of short stories and has just retired as a professor at the University of Kent.

We spoke to the writer and began by asking if he really believed he had won the prize when he received the phone call.