Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah visits Luxembourg

The Blue Sofa literary event will take place for the fourth time in Luxembourg, with a guest of honour: Abdulrazak Gurnah. Born in 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar, the Tanzanian author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. Among his eleven published novels, mostly concerning colonialism and its consequences, are oeuvres such as Paradise (1994) or By the Sea (2001).

Now, he will present his first new novel since winning the Nobel Prize, Theft, at the Pierre Werner Institute at 7pm on Friday 28 November, in a live discussion with Nathalie Jacoby. The interview, organised by Bertelsmann in collaboration with the Institute, will be in English. There are still spaces available for the reading.

The novel focuses on three young people from different backgrounds to showcase the lives of young Tanzanian cosmopolitans today.

Press release from the Pierre Werner Institute:

At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, bringing, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.

Abdulrazak Gurnah (born 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. He has published eleven novels to date, including “Paradise” (1994; nominated for the Booker Prize), “By the Sea” (2001; nominated for the Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award), “Desertion” (2006; nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize) and “Afterlives” (2020; nominated for the Walter Scott Prize and the Orwell Prize for Fiction). Gurnah is Professor Emeritus of English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent. He lives in Canterbury.

Nathalie Jacoby studied German and English literature at the University of Freiburg, Germany, where she received a doctorate in German Studies in 2000. She was visiting lecturer at the University of KwaZulu Natal Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and spent ten years working as producer and head writer for an audioguide company in London. After returning to Luxembourg, she taught German in Echternach and Mersch and joined the Luxembourgish Literature Archive (Centre national de littérature, CNL) as a scientific collaborator in 2015. In 2020 she was appointed director of the CNL. She has published on literary didactics and contemporary literature.

Attendees may register via the Pierre Werner Institute website.

This episode of the RTL BicherLies podcast contains a telephone interview between Jérôme Jaminet, Bea Kneip and Abdulrazak Gurnah.