Africa World Initiative hosts Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation and in the classroom

Nobel laureate in literature Abdulrazak Gurnah captivated Princeton audiences in an Oct. 30 visit with reflections on literature, compassion and the “oceanic cosmopolitanism” that connects artists and thinkers across continents.  

Gurnah was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and is professor of English and postcolonial literatures, emeritus, at the University of Kent in England. When he was a child in the 1950s, “travelers would come from different parts of the ocean to our island with their goods and stories,” Gurnah told a rapt audience of students, faculty members, staff and community members that packed Arthur Lewis Auditorium. “I grew up with the stories they brought.

“Every year the world came to us, then went away when the currents and the winds changed, leaving something behind, not the least of which was a greater knowledge of human multiplicity,” Gurnah said. “I have written and spoken about this phenomenon and its tremendous impact in understanding a connection with the wider world.”

Gurnah’s acclaimed novels include “Memory of Departure,” “Pilgrims Way,” “Dottie,” “Paradise,” “By the Sea” and “Afterlives.” He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 2021 “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” His Princeton talk was presented in conversation with Simon Gikandi, the Class of 1943 University Professor of English. 

Gurnah told the Princeton audience that as a schoolboy, he was given abridged versions of British and American books in English to read: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped,” Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” an illustrated copy of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.”

“We were colonized by the British and our education was a colonial one,” he said. Literature brought him a kind of refuge during the violence of the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar — but it was the radio that introduced him to the African novel.

As a teenager during the revolution, “I remember sitting in one of the small rooms in our house because the small room felt safer when there were sounds of bullets going on somewhere,” Gurnah said. “I remember listening to the BBC World Service with my aunt when I heard an interview and then a reading from a new book by a Kenyan writer. The book was called ‘Weep Not, Child,’ and the writer’s name was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.”

When he and his brother left for Canterbury, England, to escape the violence, his newfound discovery of writers from East Africa became an essential tether to the family home he left behind. “I found I had brought my home with me and that I had to learn to live with it in this unfamiliar place that was now also to become my home,” he said. “I made my way as best as I could in pursuit of what I valued and aspire to do, which was to be a scholar of literature.”

While pursuing his Ph.D. at Kent, Gurnah noticed that the African works of fiction he studied didn’t speak to his particular experience of time and place. “Part of my motivation for writing was to fill that gap,” he said. “It might seem that the writer chooses his or her subject, but I suspect that more often than not the subject chooses him or her.”

Gurnah said writing fiction has enabled him to depict “another idea of belonging, which frees itself from a polarized vision of the world.” This oceanic cosmopolitanism, as he calls it, recognizes how the ocean connects everyone and illuminates the “qualities which make us human.”

Cultivating Princeton partnerships on the African continent and beyond

Gurnah’s Princeton visit was hosted by the University’s innovative Africa World Initiative, a multifaceted University initiative to cultivate partnerships with wide-ranging impact in and beyond Africa.

His visit initiated AWI’s second full year of programming, which includes public events and initiatives focused on technology, energy, climate change and entrepreneurship, as well as teaching and research.

“The African continent is a major resource for shaping the future of the world,” said Chika Okeke-Agulu, the director of AWI and the Robert Schirmer Professor of Art and Archaeology and African American Studies. “AWI is activating connections between Princeton scholars and experts, policymakers and scholars on the African continent who have vast amounts of knowledge.

“Princeton is a relatively small institution, but it thinks big,” said Okeke-Agulu. “We’re tapping that Princeton DNA to see how we might do something that others don’t have the capacity to tackle.”

Its high-impact projects include the African Languages and Artificial Intelligence Initiative to incorporate 11 African languages into AI large-language models, and the Africa Innovation Council to leverage research from universities on the African continent for entrepreneurial ventures.

AWI has also initiated the Fusion and the Global South working group, with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the Department of Energy, to connect countries in the Global South with those in the Global North as partners in the future of fusion energy.

Gurnah’s talk reflects AWI’s focus not just on Africa as a continent but on the greater “global Africa,” encompassing the contemporary African diaspora to Europe, the U.S., the Caribbean, South America and Asia, Okeke-Agulu said.

It was the second of AWI’s Africa World Lectures, following a visit last year by the renowned Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  

Novels that pierce ‘the horrors of war and the triumph of the spirit’

Gurnah’s afternoon on campus included a visit to Gikandi’s graduate seminar, “Postcolonial Heterotopias,” where he read from “Afterlives,” one of the course readings, and answered students’ questions.

Phil McAuliffe for Africa World Initiative

The Oct. 30 talk was a lively conversation between Gurnah and Gikandi, who asked about the themes of displacement and home that animate the Nobel laureate’s work, along with themes of violence and love.

Gikandi, who is from Kenya, lauded Gurnah’s novels for their incisive depictions of the refugee experience and “a reminder of both the horrors of war and the triumph of the spirit against the will of power.”

Gikandi said he knew it was a difficult question, but wanted to ask Gurnah about the theme of violence in his fiction in the context of the real world, “especially now, when we are surrounded by violence and displacement. How do we begin to imagine transcending violence?”

“I would say this is what happens,” Gurnah answered. “These are not inventions, these are realities of our times. But I also write about how it is that we restore our humanity by love, by kindness. I’m saying that we have no choice but to overcome this with sympathy and affection and care for each other.”

Speaking to ‘the soul as well as to the mind’

Prior to the lecture, Gurnah visited Gikandi’s graduate seminar, “Postcolonial Heterotopias,” reading from “Afterlives,” one of the course readings, and answering students’ questions.

Wangechi Mwuara, a first-year graduate student from Nairobi, Kenya, said she has been a fan of Gurnah’s work for a long time. During the visit, she said, “I was struck by his insistence on the simple virtues of love and care as politically powerful. He affirmed a beautifully humanist position which spoke to the soul as well as to the mind.”

Mónica Villalón, a second-year graduate student who grew up in Gainesville, Florida, said she admires the deep attention the author pays to his characters. “In both his visit to our class and at the lecture,” she said, “he spoke of the characters as if what compels him to write is his desire to know them as people. This shows a curiosity with human encounters that I find quite moving.”

Khadeeja Farooqui, a second-year graduate student in English, looks on as Gurnah signs her copy of “Afterlives.”

Phil McAuliffe for Africa World Initiative