Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (LSE:BMY) welcomed news Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Gurnah’s 10 novels, published by Bloomsbury, include the Booker prize shortlisted Paradise and most recently, the Orwell prize shortlisted Afterlives.
Commenting on the prize, 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.”
Bloomsbury executive publisher Alexandra Pringle, who is 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, Bloomsbury said. 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).