Reflecting on the effect of having won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah said the award had made him “think more kindly” about his body of work. “Maybe it wasn’t too bad after all. You do tend to be quite critical about what you do.”
Gurnah, professor emeritus of English and postcolonial literatures at the University of Kent, was speaking in conversation with colleagues Bashir Abu-Manneh and Amy Sackville at an event last week at the university’s Gulbenkian Arts Centre to “celebrate and honour his tremendous achievement on campus and in person”.
Gurnah spoke of his pleasure at the reissuing of his early work since his award. “All these books have been reissued which is absolutely wonderful. The first three or four books have been out of print for generations and then they bring them out and you think ‘that’s the Nobel, these are good books’.”
The Nobel laureate spoke of the theme of departure and displacement in his work and what it meant for him. “Arrival is the end of a process. During the process, particularly when you’re young, you don’t think about what you’re leaving. You think about arrival, about destination. Even if the destination is a matter of chance, when you’re out… I’m quite sure what you’re leaving behind becomes clearer.
“I think arrival was also a recognition of what has been lost. Departure is not something you think about, especially when you’re young. I’m quite sure that for a lot of people who end up displaced, displaced in the sense of being forced [away] by circumstances, by violence or by war or by economic need, rather than choice, because of the pressure to leave, you don’t think about what you’re leaving until it’s too late.
“Well, it takes a long time before you can get to a point where you talk about it or invoke it with a sense of restitution as opposed to just that sense of loss. I don’t suppose it ever quite stops being some kind of hard lump that can’t be quite digested.
“I’m thinking of so many young people. I came here when I was 18 years old without a very clear idea of what this place was like or without much money or skills,” he said. “It takes a long time before you can have time to reflect because so much of the time you’re just coping and getting on with things if you’re lucky. So by the time you reflect, you’ve kind of come through to the other side.”
Asked what belonging meant to him, Gurnah said: “I’m not sure if there is a sort of benign form of belonging, even if you stay put.
“I’m not sure if you can just say: this is where I am and this is where I belong and everything is fine. I’m not really sure if that is possible for most people or at least for certain kinds of people. It might be possible for others.”
“There is something tragic about displacement but with luck you can retrieve something. And in writing this is what I’ve been wanting to say. There is a possibility of retrieving something.
“Human society and human cultures are ugly monstrous things so where is it you’re going to find this place that you’re gonna say I belong here and I’m cool and I’m happy?”
Gurnah spoke about his literary criticism in the 1980s and ’90s. “It felt to me at the time that there was a way of looking at this writing and what it was addressing in a way that was incomplete… I wanted to make sure that I could contribute something. To say: ‘Look, there is another part of the world, culture and history that is not being seen’. That was the motivation to be more receptive to a less parochial way of thinking about Africa.”
Having lectured for more than three decades at the University of Kent, Gurnah discussed whether teaching and writing were “mutually supportive activities”.
“I’m sure that there were connections and overlaps and that reading and teaching informed me as a reader of my own work but the processes are completely different. Certainly the process of teaching, there’s nothing like it. You’re dealing with people in a live, dynamic situation. Even if you’re prepared, you have to deal with how it works at the moment. And writing academic papers was a completely different experience from writing fiction.”
Gurnah carried the audience and listeners along with his humour, wit and frankness.
“But obviously reading and talking about literature would have had some influence on how I would write. Perhaps I might say ‘Gosh, that’s really good. How did he do that?’ As a way of trying to understand how that’s done is quite helpful to what I might be doing which might not be the same thing but of course if you’re a self-respecting writer you try hard to make sure it’s not the same thing or disguise it as much as you can so nobody can spot it.”
The author gave a reading from his 2020 book Afterlives. Set during German colonial rule on the coast of what is now Tanzania, the novel was longlisted last year for the Orwell Prize of Political Fiction.
Speaking at length about what had compelled him to write this novel, Gurnah said: “In the case of Afterlives very little is known about this period… in a popular sense. So that’s a necessity, in a sense, to say here’s something you should know about. For example, I myself didn’t know the extent of the casualties for that war.”
Gurnah spoke about the novel as a form of writing in which he is at home. “You have to rely on other people in playwriting and other people are not always reliable. So the one advantage of writing a novel is no one messes you around. Until the editor gets their hands on it, of course. But you can write and write what you want to say until you feel like you have done so. Because it has this canvas that’s so broad and so permissive, there’s not very much limit to what you can do in terms of reflection and exploration and writing.”
When asked what counsel he would give to young writers to sustain their energy and integrity, Gurnah’s advice was to simply write.
“Just write. I don’t think there is anything else you can do, just write and write and write until it just works. Or alternatively, it doesn’t. And you say, well, maybe this is not the right thing. But I don’t think there is any other advice.”
Asked by a member of the audience whether former colonial powers such as the UK had a “particular moral obligation” to take people in, Gurnah responded: “There’s a human obligation to take people in in need. It doesn’t matter, I don’t think, whether these are people who are a direct result of British activities. There is a moral obligation but, more than that, there is a human obligation.
“To provide if you can a prosperous country for people who are trying to save their lives from war, from state violence, from terror. The limit you can decide depending on circumstances. You can assess what people’s needs are and provide for them. This is not to say that anybody should be allowed.
“The word refugee has come to lose its meaning. Now we use the word refugee to mean anyone who wants to come into a western European country and maybe it’s important to remember this word doesn’t.
“Where you draw the line is something to be addressed humanely. People aren’t saying, let’s have an open door. But let’s not create situations where people would have to risk their lives when their lives are already in danger.”
