Nobel Laureate Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah and renowned international lawyer and writer Professor Philippe Sands will be in conversation about colonialism, writing and the need for justice on Tuesday 29 November.
Sponsored by the University’s Migration and Movement Signature Research Theme and the School of English, this special, one-off event will take place in Grimond Lecture Theatre 2 at 6pm. It is free and open to all.
Taking its departure from their most recent books, Afterlives and The Last Colony, the conversation will explore the history of German colonialism in East Africa, the devastating effect of Britain’s racist grip on its last colony in Africa, the Chagos Islands, and the continuing impact of colonial logic on the UK’s hostile asylum regime.
The event will be chaired by David Herd, Professor of Modern Literature in the School of English.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the author of ten novels, including Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award) and Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize). The winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, he lives in Canterbury.
Philippe Sands is Professor of Law at UCL and a practising barrister at Matrix Chambers. He has been involved in many of the most important international cases of recent years, including Pinochet, Congo, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Guantanamo and the Rohingya. He is the author of Lawless World, Torture Team, East West Street, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction, and Sunday Times bestselling The Ratline. He is a contributor to the Financial Times, Guardian, New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair, and makes regular appearances on radio and television.