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At 18, Abdulrazak Gurnah arrived in England as a refugee from the Zanzibar Revolution. Receiving the Nobel Prize more than 50 years later, he reflected that the “prolonged period of poverty and alienation” he experienced made him a writer.
From the contemporary immigrant experience in his debut, Memory of Departure, to colonial wartime conscription in Booker Prize shortlisted Paradise, Abdulrazak’s unflinching yet humane oeuvre interrogates the legacies of empire, centring that which is often too marginalised.
Listen as he and writer Sisonke Msimang discuss his tenth novel, Afterlives – an intergenerational portrait of love and loss under German occupation in East Africa.
This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.