The 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah(with casual black suit) back to Motherland Country and arrives at the Abeid Amani Karume International Airport and accompanied by Minister of Tourism and Antiques, honorable Simai Muhammed(with white shirt).
On December 7th, when Abdulrazak Gurnah accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature at the Swedish Embassy in London, he was the first Black writer to win the prize since Toni Marrison received it in 1993.
Gurnah was only the sixth African writer to receive the prize in the 120 years of its existence.
Gurnah is best known for the novel Paradise (1994);
Paradise is a historical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Zanzibar-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994 by Hamish Hamilton in London. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction.
The novel follows the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the 20th century. Yusuf’s father is a hotelier and is in debt to a rich and powerful Arab merchant named Aziz. Early in the story Yusuf is pawned in exchange for his father’s owed debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant.
Yusuf joins Aziz’s caravan as they travel into the interior to the lands west of Lake Tanganyika: Here, Aziz’s caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals, and difficult terrain. As the caravan returns to East Africa, World War I begin and Yusuf encounters the German Army as they sweep Tanzania, forcibly conscripting African men as soldiers.
As a young man who fled to England in 1968 to escape the ravages of the Zanzibar Revolution (the Sultanate of Zanzibar would later become part of present-day Tanzania), Gurnah had an intimate knowledge of the fracture and pain of exile. He resents, however, the presentation of the condition of the exile as always being confusing. There is an idea “idea of the non-European who encounters Europe, who becomes divided; the notion is that the result of this is a kind of confusion, that the non-European person loses something as a result of being immersed somehow in European society or culture or education”.
Abdulrazak Gurnah studied at Lumumba Secondary School;
Lumumba Secondary School is a public, coeducational secondary School in Saateni, Zanzibar, Tanzania. It is Zanzibar’s largest secondary school and has been called one of the best secondary schools in Zanzibar.
From 1958 until the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, the school was named in honor of King George VI.
Lumumba Secondary School began in 1953, known as “Government Boys’ Secondary School”, which was located in the building now known as Ben Bella Secondary School.
In 1958 the school relocated to Kinazini. In 1959, it was renamed in honor of King George VI and began enrolling students for the first time. It enrolled 7 girls out of the class of 20 students.
In 1964 the school was again renamed, for Congo Premier Patrice Lumumba, and it was known as “Lumumba College”.
In 1977 the school became “Marine and Fisheries College”, and began selective enrollment. The school officially became “Lumumba Secondary School” in 1985, suspending the fishing curriculum and adopting a secondary school curriculum to allow specialization in science subjects.
A major renovation of the school in 1990 included the construction of a corrugated iron sheet roof, under the sponsorship of Danish International Development Agency. Students developed a pond (Bwawa la samaki) in 1990 to support raising newts for experimental purposes, and projects in 1995 to keep rabbits and ducks. Additionally, students established a frog-raising project in 1999.
Notable alumni
- Samia Suluhu Hassan – Current Sixth President of the UNITED Republic of Tanzania and Former Vice President of Tanzania
- Amani Abeid Karume, Former sixth President of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar
- Ali Mohammed Shein, Former seventh President of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar
- Mohammed Gharib Bilali, Former Chief Minister of Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar and Vice President of Tanzania
- Late Seif Sharrif Hamad, Former Chief Minister of the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar and First Vice President of Zanzibar.
President of Zanzibar Dr. Mwinyi met with Professor Gurnah at state house on 26 May,2022 on his invitation and discus issues on promoting Zanzibar International due to his works to be recognized globally.
Also Professor Gurnah says,he is ready to collaborate with Zanzibar Government to works in order to attracts diaspora out side to come Zanzibar in order to increase Enployment and economy .
good
amazing
helpful