Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature

Abdulrazak Gurnah, the internationally acclaimed author of ten novels including the Booker prize shortlisted Paradise and, most recently, the Orwell prize shortlisted Afterlives, has won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Abdulrazak Gurnah said: 'I am honoured to be awarded this prize and to join the writers who have preceded me on this list. It is overwhelming and I am so proud.'

Alexandra Pringle, Executive Publisher at Bloomsbury Publishing and Abdulrazak Gurnah's long-time editor said: 'I am completely thrilled for Abdulrazak Gurnah.  For years and years he has told beautiful and powerful stories of the winds of politics, trade, colonisation, love and war that blow people across continents. I have been publishing his novels since my earliest days at Bloomsbury and after twenty years of keeping the faith, this is one of the happiest days of my life.'

Born and brought up in Zanzibar, Abdulrazak Gurnah moved to the United Kingdom in 1967 to escape the violence of the state. He is the author of ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize), The Last Gift, Gravel Heart and Afterlives (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize). Former Professor of English at the University of Kent, Abdulrazak Gurnah lives in Canterbury.

ABOUT BLOOMSBURY: Bloomsbury Publishing is a leading independent publishing house, established in 1986, with authors who have won the Nobel, Pulitzer and Booker Prizes, and is the originating publisher and custodian of the Harry Potter series. Bloomsbury has offices in London, New York, New Delhi, Oxford and Sydney.

UK: For more information, please contact Ros Ellis at ros.ellis@bloomsbury.com