Abdul Razzaq Gurna has been listening for a week; Many names have been raised. Names of this year’s Nobel laureates Gurna, who has published ten novels and a collection of short stories, was also naturally impressed by the two-time Booker Prize shortlist. Who will be the winner this time? The names of the French writer Anne Irnu, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood … were rising again. Betting was also active.
Finally, as usual, the announcement of the Swedish Academy came as a surprise to everyone. Gurna, who was in the kitchen, got a call. That is the call of the Swedish Academy. The official announcement that this time the Nobel Prize is for him. The author of Paradise was stunned for a moment. He wondered if anyone was calling to deceive him. However, he confirmed the news to the media around the world. The long-awaited award for a refugee who came to the UK in search of a living from his native Zanzibar, Africa.
Everything Gurna writes is about refugees. It’s about helpless lives being blown away to dusty continents like dust in the wind. That is his life. Own story and life. What else can he write with the utmost sincerity and dedication? But Gurna wrote without the slightest hint of hatred. The lives of those displaced across borders were literally written with sympathy. The joys and sorrows of that life were immortalized in endless distractions. The grief of the immigrant generations was deepened in that writing. His writings can even be described as petitions filed by a black man before the world’s conscience.
His works are not limited to asylum seekers. Those who trade in countries other than their home country. Those who cross the border to study and work. Gurna’s novel By the Sea has a picture that remains in the mind. Picture of a man landing a plane with a box of sandalwood candles at Heathrow Airport. That’s all he has in his hand. That’s it. No boxes or bags. Not even an address. He lands the plane. He has only one word to say. Shelter. That word is the key to Gurna’s novels.
The novel After Lives was published last year. Although his native language is Swahili, Gurna writes in English. After Lives is the life of a boy named Elias. He was kidnapped by the Germans when he was a child. Elias is a soldier of German colonial power. Fighting against its own people. That was his destiny. No other man will receive a more cruel judgment than he was commissioned to kill his own brothers by weeping inside. There is no writer in the world today other than Gurna to tell of that tragedy. The same was accepted by the Nobel Committee. Elias finally returns to his village. His mind may be cursing himself as he returns to the shattered earth under his leadership. That journey is rebirth or something. Rebirth is not about leaving behind a past life.
In Gurna’s novels, everything is always changing. Names. Memories. Experiences. Events. As the world of constant travelers is always changing. Views pass them by. Individuals are changing. Gurna’s literature is about what’s left when one’s personality changes. A writer who had hitherto been little known beyond Britain is now the world’s own.
Gurna is not a refugee. Beloved of the world. It can be said in the heart that it is more its own than its own. And not just to Gurna. To all refugees.
You may have to flee your home country. But you have a place in our hearts. As long as humanity does not die.
Content Summary: Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah wins 2021 Nobel Prize in literature
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