Writing [came] out of the situation that I was in, which was poverty, homesickness, being unskilled, uneducated. So out of that misery you begin to w… - Abdulrazak Gurnah

" "

Writing [came] out of the situation that I was in, which was poverty, homesickness, being unskilled, uneducated. So out of that misery you begin to write things down. It wasn’t like: I’m writing a novel. But this kept growing, this stuff. Then it started to become ‘writing’ because you have to think and construct and shape and so on.

English
Collect this quote

About Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abdulrazak Gurnah (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents". He is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.

Also Known As

Native Name: عبد الرزاق سالم قرنح
Alternative Names: Gurnah Abdulrazak S. Gurnah Abdul Razzaq Gurnah Abd al-Razzaq Journa
Try QuoteGPT

Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Try QuoteGPT

Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.

It seems to me that fiction is the bridge between these things, the bridge between this immense scholarship and that kind of popular perception. So you can read about these matters as fiction. And I hope that the reaction then is to say, 'I didn't know that' and possibly for the reader, 'I must go and read something about that.'

Loading...