British Nobel prize winner labels fellow recipient ‘racist'

Telegraph

7 hours ago

The British Nobel literature laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah has labelled one of his predecessors 'racist'.
The Tanzanian-British novelist, who was awarded the Nobel prize in 2021, said he could no longer read the works of the late laureate Sir VS Naipaul.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, he said that the realisation had slowly dawned on him and led him to reread Naipaul's earlier work, which in turn cemented his opinion.
Trinidadian-born British author Naipaul, who was knighted in 1990 and awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2001, was a divisive but acclaimed author, who achieved his breakthrough with his semi-autobiographical novel A House for Mr Biswas.
He won the Booker prize in 1971 for his novel In a Free State, and achieved success with his 1975 novel Guerillas. However, his personal views were questioned by many of his contemporaries.
Naipaul had negative views on post-colonial life and wrote about the 'primitivism' of African societies. He also said it was a 'mistake' being born in Trinidad.
Gurnah, who is best known for Paradise, By the Sea and Desertion, said that Naipaul was once someone he had 'read with great admiration'.
He said he believed Naipaul was less cautious about expressing racist views as he became older and more acclaimed.
Speaking at the festival in Scotland, Gurnah said: 'At a certain point of reading him, I thought, 'It's true, this guy is a racist.'
'And I can't read him any more. The case [that he is a racist] becomes less difficult in his later books.'
'Unguarded' racism
He cited the author's 1979 work A Bend in the River, saying: 'It is in an unguarded form in some of his later writings. As he became older he [perhaps] became less careful.'
Gurnah said he could no longer read the works of Saul Bellow, the late Canadian-American writer, either.
'I think I probably read everything he had written with great admiration and then a certain point came when Bellow was being asked which African writers do you read or admire, and he said, 'When you produce your Zulu Tolstoy then I will read that',' Gurnah said.
'[I thought], 'Right, I can't read that guy any more.''
He continued: 'I'm afraid there are several writers that I read with great admiration who are now in that category. Because you find out more.
'You read with pleasure and a certain kind of innocence and then you learn more and think, well.'
The author, who became a literature professor at the University of Kent, moved to the UK in the 1960s as a refugee from Zanzibar.
He left aged 17, four years after a coup broke out in the former British protectorate.
'There's something dramatic about being displaced,' Gurnah previously told The Telegraph.
'I see it as an experience of our times and one that allows me to comment on certain issues and ask questions about the divisions between this land and another or the now and the before.'