Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature: "It is a tragedy that vaccines do not reach Africa"

• Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature for his "interest in colonialism and the fate of refugees"

• Opinion Abdulrazak Gurnah and the reparative will of the Nobel Prize for Literature

"I write about migrations, belonging and uprooting because I have that experience, but also because it is part of our contemporary reality." Abdulrazak Gurnah, an African writer living in England for many years, won the Nobel

for Literature on October 7

and the fate of refugees on the gap between cultures and continents. '

Born in Zanzibar in 1948, then British protectorate, Gurnah

from the climate of violence that broke out immediately after independence and the so-called Zanzibar Revolution. A hostility directed in particular against Asian and Arab minorities. In England, Gurnah completed her studies and later

, but also returned to her story in 10 novels and several short stories.

How was the morning of October 7? I received the news from the Swedish Academy in the middle of the morning. I was in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea and thinking "what am I going to eat today?" When the phone rang. I didn't know the number and I thought they were going to try to sell me something. The person on the other side, speaking very politely, said to me: "You have been awarded the Nobel." "It's a prank? Who? ”I replied. The interlocutor, always very courteous, told me that the announcement would be made at noon. Since that was almost immediately, I logged onto the Academy's website and arrived at the exact moment my name was being called. Then I thought "It must be true!" Instantly, the phone began to ring. I was alone in the house. The first person I called was my wife. He was in the park with our nephew and he didn't believe me either!Is your life changing? From that moment, many wanted to congratulate me, many journalists looked for me. And many publishers want to translate and publish my books. It is quite a demanding period but it is wonderful. Do you recognize yourself in the reasons for the failure of the Nobel? Yes, I am happy because, although they are a few lines and cannot describe a life's work, they speak of a “rigorous and compassionate understanding of the effects of colonialism and the fate of refugees ”and I am very pleased with that. Why did you leave Zanzibar when you were 18? At that time, the government was very violent against anyone who was not in your line. Above all, against the old ruling elites of Oman. Many of those who left Zanzibar at that time were leaving because of their ancestry or political loyalty, lest they be imprisoned or killed.Many left because they could not bear the state of terror in which they lived. At that time I would not have been called a refugee, not in the sense that that word had then, that a refugee was someone who was fleeing because he was threatened by war and famine. Today, the term is used more broadly. At that time I had perhaps a nobler value than the reasons for which I left. My decision, basically, was due to the fact that I could not continue studying there. I was 18 years old, I was curious, I wanted to fulfill myself and in Zanzibar, at that time, it was impossible. I said to myself: "This is not what I want, I'm leaving." And that's what I did. How much has personal experience influenced your literature? When you do something like that, you don't think about the consequences. What you don't realize at the time is what you leave behind. There is something tragicsomething you only understand when you arrive and start thinking about the people you may not see again. A deep nostalgia assails you. Usually it takes a long time before things start to go well, before you can say it was worth it. You go into a painful process. My experience? I answer him with an idea: it is no longer just my experience. It's something that I can write about with some awareness because I've been through it, but I also try to listen to what other people say, their stories, what they feel. That is why I write about certain topics: because I have experience of them, but also because they are in front of us every day, they are happening, they are our reality. Do you already feel an «Afro-European», as Léonora Miano says? : African and European.I have lived and worked in England for so many years that it is my home, but Zanzibar is also my place. I would not use "Afro-European" because it suggests an identity that is already a synthesis of something else. I am African, I am European and it could be something else. For example, if I end up living in the Caribbean, where my wife comes from, it could happen that I also feel Caribbean. I do not want to simplify the complexity, its protagonists are often confronted with systemic racism. Did you also experience it? There is racism in Europe, in the United States, everywhere. Obviously, it was worse in the past, there was slavery, when people could be property. But today, speaking of the UK, which is the reality I know best, we live in spasms: there are periods when things seem to calm down.Then something happens and then the panic and anxiety reappear. The press goes crazy. What worries me is that the state seems unable to respond humanely. How do you explain it? They seem to be afraid of the voter, or at least of that voter who screams and rages. And the media do their part, fomenting a periodic hysteria that targets, depending on the style, Afghans, Pakistanis, Gypsies ... On the other hand, in society, on a broader scale, there is more understanding: people of different Origins grow together, children go to the same schools, watch football together and admire many black players ... Let's say we are always taking two steps forward and one step back.How do you assess the European management of migration? I think there is room to treat those in difficulties in a more humane way than the most intransigent European governments have applied. It's not that they don't know what it's like to be a refugee. It's not that they aren't rich enough to help. It is not that people seeking refuge arrive empty-handed. It is your decision. Is the memory of colonialism important in our present? It is essential and I believe that fiction can help. There are many scholars who work on colonial history, but the popular imagination does not go there. Ordinary people don't read historical research. It's normal, why should I? A novelist bridges that gap because fiction humanizes facts. It doesn't sugarcoat them, it makes them understandable, real. Fiction is useful, but reality is harsh.It's not uncommon for someone not to want to look at the sordid part of their story. Nobody wants to, but reality forces you to do it at some point. Realities like the refugee crisis in Europe. Movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo have forced many people to question themselves. I believe that today there is a greater consciousness. And that this conditions, above all, young people. In his books the colonial faults are clear. But it represents a complex world, without good and bad. There are whites who live in misery. Unfortunately, misery is everywhere. In Zanzibar we had a limited understanding of what it meant to be British: we only knew the officials and we read what they gave us to read. In a context of colonialism you only see what the colonizers want you to see, the illusion they want to project.We ignored the class differences, inequality and poverty that also exist in the UK. Its original language is Swahili. The literary one is English, sometimes interwoven with Swahili and Arabic words. How did you come up with this? Until the age of 13, in Zanzibar, the education was in Swahili. English was given in foreign language time. The secondary school teachers were already British and gave the lessons in English, even though the students did not speak it fluently. However, I soon discovered that I was successful writing in English. When I went to England, I didn't do it to study literature. If you come from countries like mine, you think you have to do engineering. But, when I arrived, when I accessed the books, I understood that that was my passion. When reading in English, it was natural to write in English,because writing is having a conversation with the authors you read. If I had had the same opportunity with French, who knows, maybe I would have written in that language. But the British came earlier and colonized me. Ngugi wa Thiong'o decided not to write in the language of the colonizers. Okay, but not everyone has to. Sooner or later it will happen, it may be an imminent generational change, part of the historical process through which all colonized peoples have passed. It may soon be considered crazy to write in English if you already have your language. So it's okay for Ngugi to go ahead, but I don't want anyone else to say, "You can't write in languages ​​other than your mother tongue." There are those who have used other languages ​​and have flourished. In their books there are also orientalisms,evocations of

, Indian and Persian influences ... All these are elements that come from the place where I was born on the shores of the Indian Ocean. There, as the story in

tells

, people have come and gone for centuries, bringing stories and knowledge with them. We knew more about places like Calcutta and Kuala Lumpur than about Paris or Rome. There was a kind of cosmopolitanism completely independent of the western one: Anders Olsson, director of the Nobel Committee, related his novel

(1994) with

by Joseph Conrad. How does that sound to you? I'm a Conrad reader, I taught it in college. And I am aware that some topics you wrote about may overlap with mine. The "heart of darkness" metaphor he used for the title is not his invention. It was an image that Europe used to represent Africa, to say that the further someone went into the center of the continent, the wilder reality became. This idea, which I think is still present in some kind of European thought, was used by Conrad going up the Congo River towards the heart of the continent, where the most tremendous scenes in his book take place. In

I imagine that same journey and discover that it is not the heart of darkness but a place where people come and go, trade and live. Conrad denounced European imperialism in Africa, its abyss, but his life is not free from the sin of racism. Conrad was a racist, but who wasn't at the time? Even the most humane authors, including Charles Dickens, spoke from a racist point of view. What is not often remembered about Conrad is that, as a young man, he lived in a part of Poland occupied by the Russians. His father died in Siberia for conspiring against Moscow. So Conrad also knew what imperialism was. Africa's voice is getting clearer and clearer but the vaccines do not come. It is a tragedy because the reports say that vaccines exist. What does not exist is the ability to pay them in poor countries.Vaccine manufacturers and their governments must show more humanity. In the end, it will be to everyone's advantage to be generous. What future do you see? As long as we have countries with such unequal power compared to other nations, how can they stop interfering? If they are interested, they will do everything they have done so far. As for Africa, some things are progressing, many are not. There is still much to do, it is difficult to be optimistic, but we are on our way.It is difficult to be optimistic, but we are on our way.It is difficult to be optimistic, but we are on our way.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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