When I spoke to new Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, 72, last year for his 10th novel Afterlives, a part of our conversation stuck with me. The Tanzanian had retired as emeritus professor of English and postcolonial literature and was reflecting on his career as a writer and academic. “I’ve been thinking about the various dimensions of colonialism throughout my adult life,” he admitted. “Colonialism transformed everything.”
I began to see his point wherever I looked. In the fallout from Brexit, colonialism was there in the continued belief in British exceptionalism, a state of affairs Sathnam Sanghera so brilliantly explored in his non-fiction book Empireland earlier this year.
On a walk with Anita Sethi recently, where we talked about I Belong Here – her wonderful blend of memoir and nature writing, taking on grief, feminism, mental health, Black Lives Matter and racism – she told me that colonialism and her family history were key. She reminded me of Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s famous phrase: “I am here because you were there.”
When Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, he became the first black African to do so since Wole Soyinka in 1986. Coincidentally, Soyinka’s new novel deals with the extended fallout of the British involvement in Nigeria; colonialism is indeed everywhere and everything, and Gurnah is its expert chronicler.
As the Nobel jury noted, Gurnah was awarded the prize “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.
It’s telling that Gurnah first began to write when his experience closely matched those of his protagonists. He was a refugee in England who had fled the revolution in Zanzibar when people of Arab origin were persecuted in the mid 1960s, and while it took some time for his ideas about the alienation and loneliness of uprooted lives to percolate into a novel, 1987’s Memory of Departure was a promising start. Hassan’s journey from an unnamed, collapsing East African totalitarian state to Kenya – where he believes he might be able to reinvent himself – spoke to the sense of migration as laden with hope and disappointment.
Gentleness and kindness does resonate with people. It's how we save each other from utter despair and self-destruction
Abdulrazak Gurnah,
novelist
Gurnah’s writing began to be noticed for its texture, too, as he drew on images and stories from the Quran and 1001 Nights, using traces of Arabic and his first language, Swahili. Two further novels, Pilgrim’s Way and Dottie, followed, before his 1994 breakthrough, Paradise.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year, the novel is about a young Muslim boy born in fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania who goes on a trading mission into the country's interior just as the German army begins to sweep into his land. It was a way in which Gurnah could interrogate how societies and cultures collapsed with relative ease against the "colonial infringement".
“What was it that made it possible for colonial powers to walk in with their maps already drawn and say, 'this belongs to us now?” Gurnah told The National last year.
Seven years later, his sixth novel By The Sea also made the Booker longlist, and while these nominations might suggest otherwise, Gurnah has tended to fly under the radar. Commercial success has eluded him in the main.
Perhaps that’s because this quietly-spoken academic has often lived up to the Nobel Prize’s characterisation of his writing as uncompromising. True, the writing can be sombre and grave, but also compassionate and kind. It asks for people to see the other point of view, which in an increasingly polarised world is something of a rarity.
Maybe, too, Gurnah has been characterised as a single issue writer. As Moroccan-American novelist Laila Lalami said after Thursday’s announcement, “the attention on the subject matter of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s work at times takes away from the aesthetic pleasures of his novels, his precise sentences, and his wit”.
It’s also true that Gurnah’s work takes on the big themes of colonialism, dislocation and migration without ever resorting to polemic; it’s the characters in these stories that feel true, not only their wider situations and contexts.
In Afterlives, for example, characters survive war with kindness and hope. "Gentleness and kindness does resonate with people," he said. "It's how we save each other from utter despair and self-destruction. This is what it means to be in a community … people are not always cruel to each other.”
So where to start in Gurnah’s bibliography? As much as it’s tempting to suggest his most famous novel, Paradise, Somali-British author Nadifa Mohamed – up for the Booker herself this year for The Fortune Men – thinks it should start with By The Sea, as she told her Twitter followers on Thursday. Scottish-Sierra Leonean writer Aminatta Forna said the same.
It begins with an old man who arrives in London as a refugee from his corrupt country with nothing but a carved incense box, and one word: “asylum”. His experience in various immigration-holding zones make him realise he hasn’t actually met anyone “who could actually see me”. But Gurnah can – and this book is a paean to friendship and shared experience.
It’s Gurnah’s writing in microcosm; tales of displacement that have a nuanced, transformative and lasting impact. As Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee, put it this week: his work is “an unending exploration driven by intellectual passion.” Quite.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
UAE SQUAD FOR ASIAN JIU-JITSU CHAMPIONSHIP
Men’s squad: Faisal Al Ketbi, Omar Al Fadhli, Zayed Al Kathiri, Thiab Al Nuaimi, Khaled Al Shehhi, Mohamed Ali Al Suwaidi, Farraj Khaled Al Awlaqi, Muhammad Al Ameri, Mahdi Al Awlaqi, Saeed Al Qubaisi, Abdullah Al Qubaisi and Hazaa Farhan
Women's squad: Hamda Al Shekheili, Shouq Al Dhanhani, Balqis Abdullah, Sharifa Al Namani, Asma Al Hosani, Maitha Sultan, Bashayer Al Matrooshi, Maha Al Hanaei, Shamma Al Kalbani, Haya Al Jahuri, Mahra Mahfouz, Marwa Al Hosani, Tasneem Al Jahoori and Maryam Al Amri
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Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
the pledge
I pledge to uphold the duty of tolerance
I pledge to take a first stand against hate and injustice
I pledge to respect and accept people whose abilities, beliefs and culture are different from my own
I pledge to wish for others what I wish for myself
I pledge to live in harmony with my community
I pledge to always be open to dialogue and forgiveness
I pledge to do my part to create peace for all
I pledge to exercise benevolence and choose kindness in all my dealings with my community
I pledge to always stand up for these values: Zayed's values for tolerance and human fraternity
Herc's Adventures
Developer: Big Ape Productions
Publisher: LucasArts
Console: PlayStation 1 & 5, Sega Saturn
Rating: 4/5
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
Tamkeen's offering
- Option 1: 70% in year 1, 50% in year 2, 30% in year 3
- Option 2: 50% across three years
- Option 3: 30% across five years
Florence and the Machine – High as Hope
Three stars
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The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
RESULTS
5pm: Handicap (PA) Dh80,000 (Turf) 2,200m
Winner: Jawal Al Reef, Fernando Jara (jockey), Ahmed Al Mehairbi (trainer)
5.30pm: Handicap (PA) Dh80,000 (T) 1,600m
Winner: AF Seven Skies, Bernardo Pinheiro, Qais Aboud
6pm: Maiden (PA) Dh80,000 (T) 1,200m
Winner: Almahroosa, Fabrice Veron, Eric Lemartinel
6.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh80,000 (T) 1,200m
Winner: AF Sumoud, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
7pm: Wathba Stallions Cup Handicap (PA) Dh70,000 (T) 1,200m
Winner: AF Majalis, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
7.30pm: Handicap (TB) Dh90,000 (T) 1,400m
Winner: Adventurous, Sandro Paiva, Ali Rashid Al Raihe
Series info
Test series schedule 1st Test, Abu Dhabi: Sri Lanka won by 21 runs; 2nd Test, Dubai: Play starts at 2pm, Friday-Tuesday
ODI series schedule 1st ODI, Dubai: October 13; 2nd ODI, Abu Dhabi: October 16; 3rd ODI, Abu Dhabi: October 18; 4th ODI, Sharjah: October 20; 5th ODI, Sharjah: October 23
T20 series schedule 1st T20, Abu Dhabi: October 26; 2nd T20, Abu Dhabi: October 27; 3rd T20, Lahore: October 29
Tickets Available at www.q-tickets.com
Stat Fourteen Fourteen of the past 15 Test matches in the UAE have been decided on the final day. Both of the previous two Tests at Dubai International Stadium have been settled in the last session. Pakistan won with less than an hour to go against West Indies last year. Against England in 2015, there were just three balls left.
Key battle - Azhar Ali v Rangana Herath Herath may not quite be as flash as Muttiah Muralitharan, his former spin-twin who ended his career by taking his 800th wicket with his final delivery in Tests. He still has a decent sense of an ending, though. He won the Abu Dhabi match for his side with 11 wickets, the last of which was his 400th in Tests. It was not the first time he has owned Pakistan, either. A quarter of all his Test victims have been Pakistani. If Pakistan are going to avoid a first ever series defeat in the UAE, Azhar, their senior batsman, needs to stand up and show the way to blunt Herath.
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Emergency phone numbers in the UAE
Estijaba – 8001717 – number to call to request coronavirus testing
Ministry of Health and Prevention – 80011111
Dubai Health Authority – 800342 – The number to book a free video or voice consultation with a doctor or connect to a local health centre
Emirates airline – 600555555
Etihad Airways – 600555666
Ambulance – 998
Knowledge and Human Development Authority – 8005432 ext. 4 for Covid-19 queries
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
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Business Insights
- Canada and Mexico are significant energy suppliers to the US, providing the majority of oil and natural gas imports
- The introduction of tariffs could hinder the US's clean energy initiatives by raising input costs for materials like nickel
- US domestic suppliers might benefit from higher prices, but overall oil consumption is expected to decrease due to elevated costs
Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
The story of Edge
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, established Edge in 2019.
It brought together 25 state-owned and independent companies specialising in weapons systems, cyber protection and electronic warfare.
Edge has an annual revenue of $5 billion and employs more than 12,000 people.
Some of the companies include Nimr, a maker of armoured vehicles, Caracal, which manufactures guns and ammunitions company, Lahab
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Starring: Saja Kilani, Clara Khoury, Motaz Malhees
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Rating: 4/5
