London (AFP)

Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah is a former refugee who fled Zanzibar in the 1960s for the UK where he began to write, inspired by his memories and immigrant experience.

The writer won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday for his "empathetic and uncompromising account of the effects of colonialism and the fate of refugees caught between cultures and continents", according to the jury who also praised his "attachment to the truth and its aversion to simplification ".

He is the first African author to receive the most prestigious literary awards since 2003.

"Traveling far from home offers distance and perspective, as well as a degree of amplitude and liberation. It makes memories more intense, which is the writer's hinterland" wrote Abdulrazak Gurnah in a column in the British daily The Guardian in 2004.

He explained that he "fell" into writing, without having planned it, at the age of 21, a few years after moving to England.

"I started to write casually, in a certain anguish, without any idea of ​​a plan but in a hurry by the desire to say more", he explained.

At the heart of his work, the themes of immigration and colonization, and the way they shape identity.

In his first interview with the Nobel Foundation, the laureate called on Europe to change its perspective on refugees from Africa and realize "that they have something to give".

“They don't come empty-handed,” said the writer, stressing that they were “talented and energetic people”.

Copies of the book "Afterlives", by novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, in a bookstore in central London on October 7, 2021 Tolga Akmen AFP

"I am still realizing that the academy has chosen to highlight these themes that are present throughout my work, it is important to address them and talk about them", he also told UK agency PA, saying he was "very proud" of his price.

- "Melancholic works" -

Born in 1948 in Zanzibar - an archipelago located off the coast of East Africa and which is now part of Tanzania - Abdulrazak Gurnah took refuge in England at the end of the 1960s, a few years ago. after independence at a time when the Arab community was being persecuted.

He was only able to return to Zanzibar in 1984.

Since 1987, he has published ten novels, three of which have been translated into French ("Paradis", "Près de la Mer" and "Adieu Zanzibar") as well as short stories.

He writes in English even though his first original language is Swahili.

His first three novels, "Memory of Departure" (1987), "Pilgrims Way" (1988) and "Dottie" (1990), evoke the experience of immigrants in contemporary British society.

He was particularly noted with his fourth novel, "Paradise", which is set in East Africa during the First World War.

The novel was selected for the Booker Prize, a British literary prize.

"Admiring Silence" (1996) tells the story of a young man who leaves Zanzibar and emigrates to England where he gets married and becomes a teacher.

A return to his native country 20 years later deeply disturbs his relationship with himself and his marriage.

"Rooted in the colonial history of the African East, rustling with Swahili legends, served by a bewitching language, Gurnah's tales navigate between the initiatory tale, the exploration of the pains of exile, autobiographical introspection and meditation on the human condition, "wrote Abdourahman A. Waberi in 2010 in Le Monde diplomatique.

Gurnah "offers us melancholy, disenchanted and superbly embodied works", he added, in this review of the book "Desertion", published in France under the name "Adieu Zanzibar".

His most recent novel, "Afterlives" was published in 2020 and looks at German colonization in Africa.

The novelist lives in Brighton, in the south-east of England and taught literature at the University of Kent until his recent retirement.

© 2021 AFP