Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. He has published ten novels to date, including "Paradise", nominated for the Booker Prize, "By the Sea", nominated for the Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and "Desertion", nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. His most recent novel "Afterlives" was nominated for the Walter Scott Prize and the Orwell Prize for Fiction in 2020. Gurnah is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent.