The character arc of Abdulrazak Gurnah
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born 20 December 1948 in the Sultanate of Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania. Between then and now sit a flight from the country at eighteen after the revolution, an arrival in England as a refugee in 1968, a doctorate and a teaching career at the University of Kent, eleven novels written across five decades, a Booker shortlisting in 1994, long years in which several of those books were out of print, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of his life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Abdulrazak Gurnah?
His books were out of print, and then Stockholm called.
He was born in Zanzibar in 1948, when it was still a sultanate under British protection. After independence in 1963 the revolution that followed brought the persecution of citizens of Arab origin, the group his family belonged to. He finished school and left, alone, at eighteen. He reached England in 1968 as a refugee, and he has written since about what that does to a person: not the drama of the leaving, but the long ordinary afterwards of it.
He built an academic life. He taught at Bayero University in Kano, northern Nigeria, from 1980, took a doctorate at the University of Kent in 1982, and stayed at Kent as a professor of English and postcolonial literature until he retired in 2017. He began publishing novels at thirty eight. Memory of Departure came in 1987, Paradise was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994, By the Sea followed in 2001 and Afterlives in 2020.
What is unusual is how little that was worth in the marketplace. He was admired by people who study literature and read by almost nobody else, and by the 2010s several of his novels were out of print in English. Then on 7 October 2021 the Swedish Academy gave him the Nobel Prize in Literature, and booksellers found they had nothing of his to sell. He took a chair at New York University Abu Dhabi in September 2024 and published an eleventh novel, Theft, in March 2025. His line is worth reading because it contains thirty five years in which, by every commercial measure, the work was failing.
The moments
Abdulrazak Gurnah's timeline.
The 1960s
He fled Zanzibar at eighteen
Setback, and it changed everything. He finished school and left alone, without his family, at eighteen, and it became the subject of everything he wrote.
The 1980s
Teaching in northern Nigeria
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A first academic post, in another African country, a continent away from the one he had left.
A doctorate at Kent
Milestone. The qualification that made him a professor, at the university he would stay at for thirty five years.
Leave Zanzibar behind, or write it
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: write the leaving, taken, or stay an academic only. He published eleven novels on exactly that subject and was given the Nobel Prize in 2021 for it, in the words of the citation, for the fate of the refugee.
Memory of Departure
Milestone, and it changed his direction. A first novel at thirty eight, nineteen years after he arrived in England.
The 1990s
Paradise, and the Booker list
Milestone, and it changed everything. His fourth novel, and the first time the literary establishment looked directly at him.
The 2000s
By the Sea
Milestone. A novel about an asylum seeker arriving at an English airport, written by a man who had done it.
The 2010s
Largely out of print
Setback, and it changed everything. Admired by people who study literature and read by almost nobody else. By every commercial measure the work was failing.
He retired from Kent
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Thirty five years at one university, ending four years before the prize.
The 2020s
Afterlives
Milestone. A tenth novel, published the year before the prize, to the usual quiet reception.
The Nobel Prize
Milestone, and it changed everything. At seventy two, the highest prize in literature, to a writer whose books shops could not supply.
A chair in Abu Dhabi
Milestone, and it changed his direction. Back to teaching at seventy five, in the Gulf, a short sea crossing from where he was born.
Theft
Milestone, and it changed everything. A new novel at seventy six, and this time the shops had ordered it in advance.
Desert Island Discs
Milestone. The British institution that marks when somebody has become part of the national furniture.
The arc goes on, still writing Zanzibar down, so it is drawn mid sentence rather than at the end. What it has set moving is on shelves that did not stock him in 2020: eleven novels about leaving and arriving, by a man who did both at eighteen and took fifty years to be read.
What he wrote
Books by Abdulrazak Gurnah
- 1987
Memory of Departure
His first novel. A young man trying to get out of a coastal town in East Africa.
- 1988
Pilgrims Way
A Tanzanian hospital worker in Canterbury, and England seen from outside it.
- 1990
Dottie
A Black British woman in 1950s London, piecing together a family history nobody will explain to her.
- 1994
Paradise
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. A boy pawned to a merchant in East Africa before the First World War.
- 2001
By the Sea
Two men from Zanzibar in an English seaside town, and the story each has been telling about the other.
- 2011
The Last Gift
A man who has said nothing about where he came from, and the family left to work it out.
- 2017
Gravel Heart
A son sent from Zanzibar to London, and the silence he was sent away from.
- 2020
Afterlives
German East Africa, and the people left standing after the colonial armies have gone.
Your turn
Every line draws a unique story.
His had three decades where nothing visible happened at all. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Abdulrazak Gurnah: frequently asked questions
What people ask about his line.
What is Abdulrazak Gurnah's character arc?
What were the turning points in Abdulrazak Gurnah's life?
Why did Abdulrazak Gurnah leave Zanzibar?
What was Abdulrazak Gurnah's biggest setback?
What did Abdulrazak Gurnah win the Nobel Prize for?
What has Abdulrazak Gurnah written?
What does Abdulrazak Gurnah do now?
Where does this timeline of Abdulrazak Gurnah's life come from?
More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with his.
Sources
- The Nobel Prize in Literature 2021, NobelPrize.org (facts and biobibliography).
- Abdulrazak Gurnah, English Wikipedia biography.
- Abdulrazak Gurnah, Britannica biography.
- Abdulrazak Gurnah, Chronicler of Migrant Experience, Wins 2021 Nobel Prize, Smithsonian Magazine.
- Theft (Gurnah novel), English Wikipedia.
- Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 25 May 2025.