Abdulrazak Gurnah FRSL was born in Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), December 1948. Tanzanian-born novelis and academic who is based in the United Kingdom. He is a Ph.D. holder. He Worked as a hospital orderly; lecturer in English and American literature, Rutherford College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, England.
Early Life
He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and came to the UK as a refugee in the 1960s during the Zanzibar Revolution.
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948, in Zanzibar, Tanzania. After fleeing Zanzibar at age 18 to escape the persecution of Arab citizens during the Zanzibar Revolution, he arrived in England in 1968 as a refugee.
Abdulrazak Gurnah Education
He initially studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded by the University of London. He then moved to the University of Kent, where he earned his PhD, with a thesis titled Criteria in the Criticism of West African Fiction, in 1982.
Abdulrazak Gurnah Career
From 1980 to 1983, Gurnah lectured at Bayero University Kano in Nigeria. He went on to become a professor of English and postcolonial literature at the University of Kent, where he taught until his retirement in 2017, and where he is now professor emeritus of English and postcolonial literatures.
See also: Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah confirmed as one of the world’s greatest writers by Nobel Prize
Abdulrazak Gurnah Personal Life
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a married man with children but has kept his family away from the limelight.
Abdulrazak Gurnah Books
- Paradise- 1994
- By the Sea- 2001
- Desertion-2005
- Afterlives- 2020
- The Last Gift- 2011
- Admiring Silence-1996
- Memory of departure-1987
- Gravel Heart- 2017