'Uncompromising' Tanzanian writer takes Nobel prize

Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature yesterday for work on the legacies of imperialism on uprooted individuals.

The Swedish Academy said it recognized Gurnah's "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.'

Born in Zanzibar in 1948 and now a professor at England's University of Kent, Gurnah is the author of 10 novels, including Paradise, which was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize.

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee for literature, called him "one of the world's most prominent post-colonial writers.''

Last year's prize went to American poet Louise Gluck.

In 2018 the award was postponed after sex abuse claims rocked the Swedish Academy, which selects winners. And the awarding of 2019's prize to Austrian Peter Handke caused protests over his support for the Serbs in the 1990s' Balkan wars.