ABDULRAZAK Gurnah (pictured), a Tanzanian novelist, has won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award-giving body said on Thursday.
The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.14 million).
The Tanzanian currently lives in Britain and has written novels such as Paradise, Desertion, By the Sea among others.
The prizes, for achievements in science, literature and peace, were created through a bequest in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and wealthy businessman Alfred Nobel. They have been awarded since 1901, with the final prize in the line-up – economics – a later addition.
Past winners for the award have been novelists such as Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison, poets such as Pablo Neruda, Joseph Brodsky and Rabindranath Tagore, or playwrights such as Harold Pinter and Eugene O’Neill.
According to Reuters, beyond the prize money and prestige, the Nobel literature award generates a vast amount of attention for the winning author, often spurring book sales and introducing less well-known winners to a broader international public.
