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The current Nobel Prize in Literature had to look for it. Also in his native Zanzibar, he reads more in Swahili and did not escape the strange rotation of the Swedish Academy. Hence, there is a fascination for the fifth African writer among 117 award winners, of simple prose that travels through racism and the horrors of German and Asian colonization, as well as the uprooting suffered firsthand. But at the same time it repeats a masculine profile and in English, far from the diversity that the institution boasts.
The profile of Abdulrazak Gurnah, teacher and author of novels and shorter stories –among which stand out ‘Paradise’, ‘By the Sea’ and ‘Afterlives’–, is captured in this program. Before becoming the 2021 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, which surprised him as much or more than other mortals, his journey was that of a writer born of the need to remember the Tanzania and the continent that were taken from him.
As a Zanzibari refugee in the United Kingdom, and of Muslim origin, he studied at the University of Kent and became a member of the Royal Society of Literature. Always investigating and reflecting on all the horrors detonated by colonialism and postcolonialism, yes, with a particular look inside the great drawer that African literature supposes.
An example is his description of Asian communities in East Africa, the racism emanating from them, as well as the imposition by the Germans, less described than the English or the French, who in turn reached a contradictory and unequal continent.
However, without detracting from Gurnah’s work, as the days go by, this Nobel is celebrated not so much as an African, but as an award that looks outside the West, that celebrates other themes, but does not escape the western. In this case, the British and the normative, about an author who has lived or still lives in Europe. And there, as every year, the question is: has the Swedish Academy that awards this award managed to understand diversity or does it fall into the same dynamic as always?
In this chronicle we also talk about the first film filmed in space and with which Russia advanced to the United States; the rise of French cinema and the economic support it receives from the State; and the great premiere of the billboard that is explained only with a ‘007’ or ‘license to kill’.
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