Abdularazak Gurnah is the fourth author from sub-Saharan Africa to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Is the tide turning for African writers?
Abdulrazak Gurnah, posing from his home in Canterbury, England, following the Nobel Prize announcementImage: Frank Augstein/AP Photo/picture alliance
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Two writers from sub-Saharan Africa are honored with prestigious literary prizes this month.
Abdulrazak Gurnah, an author who was born in Zanzibar and has lived in Britain since the late 1960s, is this year's Nobel Prize for Literature laureate. His award brings the total number of laureates from sub-Saharan Africa to receive the prestigious prize to four.
And Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga receives the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade at the end of October.
For years, such awards were predominantly given to Western authors. Is a paradigm shift on the horizon?
"I think that the world is opening up to stories from the African continent — and it has been a long road," Dangarembga told DW.
Tsitsi Dangarembga: 'It has been a long road'Image: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP Photo/picture alliance
Dangarembga's debut novel, Nervous Conditions, was published in Germany in the early 1990s, but it was more or less forgotten until Dangarembga curated the African Book Festival in 2019, and the book was reissued under a new title.
Gurnah's books took a similar turn. Five titles were translated into German, but currently the editions are out of print in bookstores.
Nobel could 'revitalize' African literature
"I believe that the awarding of this prize can revitalize African literature," said Kossi Efoui, a writer from Togo.
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Many African authors who write in French or in African languages, for example, are not translated into English, he said, arguing that the West's limited recognition of African literature might also be because of a lack of accessibility.
"The Black Lives Matter movement has definitely created a lot of media attention for the perspectives of people of color around the world," Venice Trommer, who runs Interkontinental, a book store in Berlin that specializes in African literature and co-organizes the African Book Festival, told DW.
Gurnah's novels deal with "the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents"Image: AFP via Getty Images
"There's been an awakening in the minds of a lot of white people who are just trying to be critical of themselves," Trommer said. "And they want to be informed and open to perspectives that are different from their own."
Trommer said she hadn't see a paradigm shift yet, but "it was definitely long overdue that we looked beyond the European and American horizons when awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature."Putting Tanzania and Zanzibar back on the map
Gurnah's Nobel Prize is a reason to celebration in his native Zanzibar, an archipelago that is now an autonomous region of Tanzania.
"This means a lot for Zanzibar's struggle for self-determination," the Zanzibar literary critic Ismail Jussa told DW. It helps put Zanzibar back on the world map, he said, adding that the committee has acknowledged that Gurnah's works have helped readers understand "the divisions brought by the colonialists, how hearts are torn apart between homes where people come from and the lives in exile where people have been forced to go."
Gurnah was 15 when Tanzania became independent. While Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere had a Socialist bent, Zanzibar's local ruler, Abeid Karume, targeted the Zanzibari Arabs.
Gurnah, who had Arab ancestors, fled to the UK.
His mother tongue is Swahili, but he writes in English and has taken British citizenship.
Like other authors recognized in Europe and the US, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Gurnah is familiar with and moves confidently in both the West and Africa.
'Better connections in the publishing world'
"Authors who live or have lived in the West naturally have better connections in publishing and have been published in European, American or even internationally in other linguistic contexts," Trommer said, adding that it is easier for them than for authors who live, work and write in Africa.
Nigerian author Elnathan John and Olumide Popoola, a Nigerian-German writer and performance artist, at the Interkontinental bookstoreImage: Inter Kontinental
The economic and social conditions for authors in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are difficult, Dangarembga said. They receive little support, she added.
"Another reason is that the stories of sub-Saharan Africa are stories that more often than not bring into question the global power structure that we live under today because of the way the world is built on imperialism, which included the slave trade, colonialism and the racism that exists today," she said.
It is not easy for "people who are the gatekeepers to literature in the world to appreciate those stories in the way that they might be appreciated if the balance of power was different," she said, calling that another reason why "fewer of these stories get through."
It remains to be seen whether books by African authors are on the rise.
Abdulrazak Gurnah's recognition, however, was not only a surprise — he did not appear anywhere ahead of the Nobel committee's announcement as a favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature — but an important signal that it is time to open up to other narratives.
Nobel Literature Prize: The past 20 winners
Bob Dylan, Svetlana Alexievich, Annie Ernaux and now Han Kang. Here's a look back at the last 20 laureates of the prestigious literary award.
Image: DANIEL JANIN AFP via Getty Images
2024: Han Kang
Han Kang is the first South Korean author to win the Nobel Prize in literature, recognizing "her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life." Her publication debut came as a poet in 1993; the Man Booker International Prize for fiction, awarded to her in 2016 for her novel "The Vegetarian," marked her global breakthrough.
Image: Yonhap/picture alliance
2023: Jon Fosse
The Norwegian playwright has had 1,000 productions of his plays staged in more than 50 languages. He is also the author of novels, poetry and children's books. The Nobel Prize committee selected the writer "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable." He is shown here at the National Book Awards in 2022, where he was a nominee for "A New Name: Septology VI-VII."
The French author, born in 1940, is renowned for her autobiographical prose works that go "beyond fiction in the narrow sense," said the Swedish Academy. Among others, her 2001 book "Happening" deals with her illegal abortion from the 1960s. She was selected "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory."
Image: Christoph Hardt/Future Image/imago images
2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah
Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2021 "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism," said the Swedish Academy. "His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world."
Image: Ger Harley/StockPix/picture alliance
2020: Louise Glück
Crowned with the Nobel Prize in literature in 2020, the American poet and essayist had already won major awards in the US, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, as well as the National Humanities Medal, which was presented by Barack Obama in 2016. Her most notable works include the "The Triumph of Achilles" (1985) and "The Wild Iris" (1992).
Image: Carolyn Kaster/AP/picture alliance
2019: Peter Handke
The Austrian author born in 1942 became famous with experimental plays such as "Offending the Audience" in 1966. He also co-wrote Wim Wenders films, including "Wings of Desire." The decision to award Handke the Nobel Prize was criticized since he is also known for his controversial positions on the Yugoslav wars. In 2014, he had also called the prize to be abolished, dubbing it a "circus."
Image: AFP/A. Jocard
2018: Olga Tokarczuk
The Polish writer was actually awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in 2019, since it had been postponed for a year following scandals affecting the Swedish Academy, the body that chooses the laureates for the award. A two-time winner of Poland's top literary prize, the Nike Award, Tokarczuk was also honored in 2010 with the Man Booker International Prize for her novel "Flights."
Image: Imago Images/BE&W/B. Donat
2017: Kazuo Ishiguro
Japan-born British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer Kazuo Ishiguro won the 2017 award. His most renowned novel, "The Remains of the Day" (1989), was adapted into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins. His works deal with memory, time and self-delusion.
Image: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
2016: Bob Dylan
An atypical but world famous laureate: US songwriter Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016. The Swedish Academy selected Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Castello
2015: Svetlana Alexievich
Calling her work "a monument to suffering and courage in our time," the Swedish Academy honored the Belarusian author and investigative journalist in 2015. Alexievich is best known for her emotive firsthand accounts of war and suffering, including "War's Unwomanly Face" (1985) and "Voices from Chernobyl" (2005).
Image: Eastnews/Imago Images
2014: Patrick Modiano
The French writer's stories describe a universe of haunted cities, absentee parents, criminality and lost youths. They are all set in Paris with the shadow of World War II looming heavily in the background. The Swedish Academy described the novelist, whose work has often focused on the Nazi occupation of France, as "a Marcel Proust of our time."
Image: PATRICK KOVARIK/AFP
2013: Alice Munro
Canadian writer Alice Munro is no stranger to accolades, having received the Man Booker International Prize and the Canadian Governor General Literary Award three times over. The Swedish Academy called her a "master of the contemporary short story."
Image: CHAD HIPOLITO/empics/picture alliance
2012: Mo Yan
Guan Moye, better known under his pen name Mo Yan, was praised by the Swedish Academy as a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." The decision was criticized by Chinese dissidents like artist Ai Weiwei, who claimed Mo Yan was too close to the Chinese Communist Party and did not support fellow intellectuals who faced political repression
The academy chose Tomas Gosta Transtromer as the winner in 2011 "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality." In the 1960s, the Swedish poet worked as a psychologist at a center for juvenile offenders. His poetry has been translated into over 60 languages.
Image: Henrik Montgomery/epa/dpa/picture alliance
2010: Mario Vargas Llosa
The Peruvian novelist received the Nobel Prize "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." In Latin America, he is famous for uttering the phrase "Mexico is the perfect dictatorship" on TV in 1990 and for punching his once-friend and fellow Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in the face in 1976.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Riedl
2009: Herta Müller
The German-Romanian author was awarded the Nobel Prize as a writer "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." She is noted for her work criticizing the repressive communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, which she experienced herself. Müller writes in German and moved to West Berlin in 1987.
Image: Arno Burgi/dpa/picture alliance
2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio
The Swedish Academy called J.M.G. Le Clezio an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization." Le Clezio was born in Nice, France, in 1940 to a French mother and a Mauritian father. He holds dual citizenship and calls Mauritius his "little fatherland."
Image: ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP
2007: Doris Lessing
The 11th woman to win the award since its creation in 1901, British author Doris May Lessing (1919-2013) wrote novels, plays and short stories. The Nobel Prize recognized her for being a writer "who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny." She also campaigned against nuclear weapons and the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Image: Leonardo Cendamo/Leemage/picture alliance
2006: Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk, "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures," was the first Turkish author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. With more than 13 million books sold, he is Turkey's bestselling writer. Pamuk was born in Istanbul and currently teaches at Columbia University in New York City.
Image: Peter Steffen/dpa/picture alliance
2005: Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," was awarded the Nobel Prize three years before his death from liver cancer. He died on Christmas Eve in 2008. The British playwright directed and acted in many radio and film productions of his own work. In total, he received more than 50 awards.
Image: Marx Memorial Libra/Mary Evans/picture alliance
