Event celebrating work of novelist Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah (Emeritus) on Thursday 22 November will also feature a keynote talk from novelist Giles Foden.
To celebrate his long and illustrious career, Abdulrazak, Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures, will be interviewed by BBC News presenter Razia Iqbal to talk about his work and life in Britain and Zanzibar and the works that he has produced over the past forty years.
The event will also feature a keynote talk from novelist Giles Foden discussing the impact of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s work. Foden is the author of The Last King of Scotland, which won the 1998 Whitbread First Novel Award and was released as an Oscar-winning film in 2006.
Emeritus Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah
The event begins at 17.00 and will be followed by a drinks reception in Grimond Foyer. The event has been organised by the School of English and is free to attend. There is free parking on campus from 17.00.
Professor Gurnah was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa. He came to Britain as a student in 1968 and has taught for many years in the School of English at the University of Kent, retiring as a Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures in 2017.
During that time he wrote numerous works that pose questions around ideas of belonging, colonialism, displacement, memory, and migration. His novel Paradise, set in colonial East Africa during the First World War, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1994.