Nobel Prize author did not pick literature A-level as it did not feel ‘useful'

South Wales Argus

24-05-2025

The Tanzanian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2021, was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar, now part of Tanzania, and moved to Britain as a refugee in 1968, fleeing a repressive regime that persecuted the Arab Muslim community to which he belonged.
His A-level subjects, however, consisted of maths, physics and chemistry after being 'led' to take science courses to help contribute to his country.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, he said: 'We grew up during the campaign for decolonisation, and it was kind of drummed into us, and perhaps it didn't need that much drumming, that if you get an opportunity to study, then you must do something that's going to be useful to your country. Whoever thought that reading literature was going to be useful to anybody?
Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah in Canterbury, Kent, after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature (Steve Parsons/PA)
'So, really, we were all kind of being led towards either doing science subjects, if you got the opportunity, or possibly law or something like that. And so when we came here, we chose to do A-levels in those subjects. I worked pretty hard, especially when my cousin was still here with us, and he just made sure we we did all the homework.'
He later changed courses to study literature and took evening classes, going on to obtain a Bachelor of Education from Christ Church college Canterbury and then a PhD.
Gurnah added: 'I thought, this is what I should have done from the beginning. I should not have listened to that hectoring voice that was saying, be something useful. I should have done this because this is something I get pleasure from doing and that I know I can do well.'
The award-winning writer was praised by the Swedish Academy for the 'uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism' reflected in his 10 novels including Memory of Departure, Paradise and By The Sea.
Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah won a Nobel Prize in 2021 (Steve Parsons/PA)
Gurnah arrived in Britain in the 1960s after persuading his father to let him and his brother travel out of the country through 'illegal' means, although they did not tell their mother they were leaving.
He said: 'It was difficult to organise because it was not possible to have travel documents. The security advisers for the government were from the GDR, East Germany, and they were, as you know, obsessed with making sure people don't travel, don't leave, so it meant that we had to leave in rather, well, really rather illegal ways, which I'll leave at that.
Speaking about whether he got his mother's blessing to leave, he said: 'No, we couldn't tell her.
'The first thing I thought when I was on my own after having been picked up from the airport by the cousin and taken to the place where we were staying, and I was lying in bed and thinking, 'What have I done?''
It was another 17 years before he was able to see his family again, after leaving his parents and four siblings to study in Britain, and paid for the flight using insurance money he received for a roof leak in his house in Balham, stuffing the hole in the ceiling with newspaper.
Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah (Steve Parsons/PA)
In the episode, which asks guests to share the soundtrack to their lives, Gurnah selected a range of music including songs from his Zanzibar heritage, the Beatles and Hit The Road Jack by Ray Charles.
His fifth song for the programme was The Beatles' A Day In The Life, which he explained reminds him of his first Christmas in the UK after a family hosted him and his brother.
He said: 'We were invited to spend Christmas day, our first Christmas in England with this family, if I remember correctly, there was two sons and a daughter. The eldest son was possibly about 18 or 19, something like and one of his presents was Sergeant Pepper. And so he put it on in a record player. And so that's the first time I heard this, but every time I listened to this opening, I remember that family and that Christmas.'
In March he published his first book since winning the Nobel Prize, Theft, which follows the lives of three young men in Tanzania at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Abdulrazak Gurnah's episode of Desert Island Discs is available on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 from Sunday at 10am.