Abdulrazak Gurnah

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021

Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. Prize awarded "for his uncompromising & compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism & the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents."

"Respect yourself and others will come to respect you. That is the meaning of honour."

Quotations

1. "You have to talk about the things that cause you pain."
― Gravel Heart
2. "I was only rarely called upon to say anything in the open battlefield, although at times Emma looked accusingly at me and made me feel that I might have offered more support had I been of a less spineless constitution"
― Admiring Silence
3. "In no time at all after I moved, I was overcome by the enormity of my abandonment, like someone weeping in a crowd.
I was astonished by the sudden surge of loneliness and terror I felt when I realized how stranded I was in this hostile place, that I did not know how to speak to people and win them over to me, that the bank, the canteen, the supermarket, the dark streets seemed so intimidating, and that I could not return from where I came – that, as I then thought, I had lost everything. Then Emma came and filled my life. I can’t describe that."
― Admiring Silence
4. "Respect yourself and others will come to respect you. That is true about all of us, but especially true about women. That is the meaning of honour."
― Paradise