QuickThots on #NobelPrizeLiterature
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the SIXTH African writer to have won the Nobel Prize in literature. Others include Wole Soyinka, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer, JM Coetzee and Doris Lessing. 1/
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the SIXTH African writer to have won the Nobel Prize in literature. Others include Wole Soyinka, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer, JM Coetzee and Doris Lessing. 1/
There's tidy alignment b/w ascendancy of multiculturalism movements in Europe and recipients of the LitNobel. Soyinka, Mahfouz, Gordimer, Walcott, Morrison & Ōe won successively from 1986-1994. For a brief 8 years, LitNobel was diverse, political, progressive, with-it. 2/
tbh, 2000-2012 were pretty good years too as the Nobel prize committee took literary journeys through China, Trinidad, Peru, South Africa, Turkey, Zimbabwe...The almost-decade after that has been real white/Euro barring Ishiguro. 3/
With Gurnah's win, its interesting to think thru how the LitNobel constructs African literature; not too diff from how academics/critics do it: English language writing is privileged, South Africa and Nigeria dominate. And Egypt/arabic-lit becomes a crisis of categorization 4/
Gurnah would likely even agree here about the strange snub to the giant of African letters, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. East Africa is being placed on a certain western prize circuit but it has been emptied of its most important writer and most vocal native-languages advocate, Ngugi. 5/
Kenya and Tanzania are vibrant centers of Swahili language, culture, education, literature, among other languages. Gurnah chooses to write in English unlike many legends like Haji Gora Haji from Zanzibar or Euphrase Kezilahabi & Shabaan bin Robert from Tanzania ... 6/
Picking an English-language writer from a region which has given us decolonize-minds/mother-tongue-debates via Ngugi makes for symbolism. But thats not all, it also primes the market for African literature in very particular ways in the West and in the "Rest" (of the world) 7/
LitNobel holds up a mirror to publishers, agents, critics. In the US, no one can find his books. Media scrambling to get info on him. US publishing is truly hostile to African literature, not a doubt. Here, only 1-2-3 writers are held up to represent an entire continent. 8/
Gurnah's simple tweet this morning "I dedicate this Nobel Prize to Africa and Africans and to all my readers" made me kinda teary. But the fact that someone dedicates a prize to a continent of 50+ countries and a gazillion languages, cultures, landscapes also tugs at me...
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
