Abdulrazak Gurnah

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah talks about his new novel, Theft, his first since the Nobel award, and receives the honorary fellowship of Oxford Literary Festival in recognition of his outstanding contribution to literature.

Theft is set in 1930s Zanzibar where three very different people, Karim, Fauzia and Badar, are coming of age and dreaming of the possibilities for their young nation. It seems as if all doors are closed for Badar, an uneducated servant boy who has never known his parents. He finds his first true home in a house in Dar es Salaam and the friendship of the young man of the house, Karim. A false accusation finds him sent away but Karim and Fauzia stay true to their friend. Their bonds are tested by their first steps in love, infatuation, work and parenthood and Karim is tempted into a betrayal that will change their lives.

‘One of the world’s most prominent postcolonial writers’ Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee

Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first black African to be honoured in 35 years. He was also a judge of the 2016 Booker Prize. His novels include Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Admiring Silence, By the Sea, Desertion, The Last Gift, Gravel Heart and Afterlives. His work is dominated by issues of identity, memory and displacement and how these are shaped by the legacies of colonialism. Gurnah is a former professor of English at the University of Kent. He will receive the festival’s honorary fellowship at the conclusion of the event.

The honorary fellowship of Oxford Literary festival has previously been awarded to:

2009 Baroness PD James
2010 Dame Antonia Byatt
2011 Sir Kazuo Ishiguro
2012 William Boyd
2013 Sir Philip Pullman
2014 Jan Morris
2015 David Lodge