KULTURA / CULTURE 28 | Književnost » Literature WI NNE R OF T HE NOB E L PR I Z E I N L I T E R AT UR E Every life isworth remembering Abdulrazak Gurnah has spent more than three decades writing, with quiet and unfaltering conviction, about those who’ve been suppressed and cast aside in the forgotten corners of history Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in Zanzibar in 1948. When his country went through a revolution in 1964, citizens of Arab origin were persecuted and Gurnah was forced to flee. He was just 18. It was three years later, while living as a refugee in England, that he began writing, and he chose to do so in English, despite Swahili being his first language. His first novel, Memory of Departure, was published in 1987. Next came the works Paradise (1994), By the Sea (2001) and Desertion (2005), all of which were shortlisted for the most prestigious literary awards. He recently retired from his position as professor of English and postcolonial literature at the University of Kent. The author of numerous short stories and essays, as well as his 10 novels, he has dedicated his literary career to exploring the ways human beings react in exile. His novels are set in the intimate spaces created by families, companions and friendships: in those spaces where love and duty are nurtured. In book after book, he has led us through shocking moments in history and destructive cracks in society, carefully sketching what it is that keeps those spaces intact, writes British daily The Guardian. Each of Gurnah’s novels focuses on people whose stories have not entered the archives or which lack the documents required tomake themunforgettable. But those shop owners, housewives, local soldiers, students and refugees are important to him and he uses his books to make them profound and complex, reminding us that every life is worth remembering. In recent years, as a series of humanitarian crises has compelled desperate people to risk their lives in the quest for a better future, Gurnah's work has gained greater resonance and significance. He wrote in a 2001 essay forThe Guardian: “The debate over asylum is twinned with a paranoid narrative of race, disguised and smuggled in as euphemisms about foreign lands and cultural integrity”. And his novels actually insist on stripping this paranoid narrative of its power. However, Gurnah doesn’t yell or call for argument, but rather offers a constant, relentless, unfaltering voice that soon becomes the only audible sound. Autor je brojnih kratkih priča i eseja, kao i 10 romana He is the author of numerous short stories and essays, as well as 10 novels FOTO: Profimedia.rs / Tolga Akmen / AFP
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