2021 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Abdulrazak Gurnah. The prize was announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on 7 October 2021.

The citation

The citation reads: "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents".

The laureate

Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948.

Why it matters

The Tanzanian-born writer came to Britain as a refugee in the 1960s and is emeritus professor at the University of Kent. His novels include Paradise and By the Sea.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.