Abdulrazak Gurnah, Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures, has been appointed as one of the judges for the 2016 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Professor Gurnah, of the School of English, joins an historian, a literary critic, a poet and an actor on the judging panel, announced on 14 December.
Chaired by Amanda Foreman, biographer and historian, the panel also includes: Jon Day, Critic and Lecturer in English at King’s College London; David Harsent, poet and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton; Olivia Williams, actor.
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in Zanzibar and joined the University of Kent in 1985. His fourth novel Paradise was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1994 and By The Sea was longlisted in 2004. His latest novel is The Last Gift (2011).
His main academic interest is in postcolonial writing and in discourses associated with colonialism, especially as they relate to Africa, the Caribbean and India.
Next year will be the 48th year of the prestigious Man Booker Prize, which was launched in 1969. The 2016 judging panel will be looking for the best novel of the year, selected from entries published in the UK between 1 October 2015 and 30 September 2016.
The ‘Man Booker Dozen’ of 12 or 13 books will be announced in late July 2016 and the shortlist of six books in early September 2016. The winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on 11 October 2016.