Moyez G. Vassanji is a Canadian novelist and editor, who writes under the name M. G. Vassanji. Vassanji's work has been translated into several languages. As of 2020, he has published nine novels, as well as two short-fiction collections and two nonfiction books. Vassanji's writings, which have received considerable critical acclaim, often focus on issues of colonial history, migration, diaspora, citizenship, gender and ethnicity.
Roy Aubrey Kelvin Heath was a Guyanese writer who settled in the UK, where he lived for five decades, working as a schoolteacher as well as writing. His 1978 novel The Murderer won the Guardian Fiction Prize. He went on to become more noted for his "Georgetown Trilogy" of novels, consisting of From the Heat of the Day (1979), One Generation (1980), and Genetha (1981), which were also published in an omnibus volume as The Armstrong Trilogy, 1994. Heath said that his writing was "intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana".
Roland Smith is an American author of young adult fiction as well as nonfiction books for children.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Up to the second half of the 20th century, Tanzanian literature was primarily oral. Major oral literary forms include folktales, poems, riddles, proverbs, and songs. The majority of the oral literature in Tanzania that has been recorded is in Swahili, though each of the country's languages has its own oral tradition. The country's oral literature is currently declining because of social changes that make transmission of oral literature more difficult and because of the devaluation of oral literature that has accompanied Tanzania's development. Tanzania's written literary tradition has produced relatively few writers and works; Tanzania does not have a strong reading culture, and books are often expensive and hard to come by. Most Tanzanian literature is orally performed or written in Swahili, and a smaller number of works have been published in English. Major figures in Tanzanian modern literature include Shaaban Robert, Muhammed Said Abdulla, Aniceti Kitereza, Ebrahim Hussein, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Penina Muhando.
Adania Shibli is a Palestinian author and essayist. She is mainly known for the 2020 translation of her novel Minor Detail into English, German and other languages, and for a public controversy in Germany following the cancellation of a literary prize for this book, originally scheduled for the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair.
Footsteps is the third novel in the Buru Quartet tetralogy by the Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The tetralogy fictionalizes the life of Tirto Adhi Soerjo, an Indonesian nobleman and pioneering journalist. This installment covers the life of Minke – the first-person narrator and protagonist, based on Tirto Adhi Soerjo – after his move from Surabaya to Batavia, the capital of Dutch East Indies. The original Indonesian edition was published in 1985 and an English translation by Max Lane was published in 1990.
Paradise is a historical novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Zanzibar-born British writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994 by Hamish Hamilton in London. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction.
The Sympathizer is the 2015 debut novel by Vietnamese-American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen. It is a best-selling novel, and recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel received generally positive acclaim from critics, it was named on more than 30 best book of the year lists and a New York Times Editor's Choice.
Piecing Me Together is a 2017 young adult novel written by Renée Watson. The first person novel tells the story of Jade, an ambitious African American high school student. The book, a New York Times best seller, was well reviewed and won several awards.
So Loud a Silence is a 1996 young adult novel by Lyll Becerra de Jenkins. It is about a teenager, Juan Guillermo, who leaves Bogotá to live with his grandmother on a farm in the Colombian countryside.
Afterlives is a 2020 work of historical fiction by the Nobel Prize-winning Zanjibar-born British author Abdulrazak Gurnah. It was first published by Bloomsbury Publishing on 17 September 2020. Set mainly in the first half of the 20th century, the plot follows four protagonists living in an unnamed town on the Swahili coast of what is now Tanzania from the time of German colonial rule until a few years after independence. In April 2021, the novel was longlisted for the Orwell Prize of Political Fiction.
Gravel Heart is a 2017 novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. It is Gurnah's ninth novel and was first published by Bloomsbury Publishing on 1 August 2017. The story is set in the late 20th century and follows Salim, who moves from Zanzibar to the United Kingdom, as he reflects on his parents' separation. The title originates from a phrase used in Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure.
By the Sea is a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. It was first published in the United States by The New Press on 11 June 2001 and in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publishing in May 2001. It is Gurnah's sixth novel. By the Sea was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
The Last Gift is a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. It is Gurnah's eighth novel and was first published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2011. The plot centres on Abbas, an immigrant from east Africa living in England, who reflects on his past after he has a stroke.
Pilgrims Way is a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom. It is Gurnah's second novel.
Memory of Departure is a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1987 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom. It is Gurnah's first novel. It follows a Muslim man in an unnamed African country who seeks to be educated abroad.
Dottie is a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah published by Jonathan Cape in 1990. It is Gurnah's third novel.
Silence Is My Mother Tongue is a novel by Sulaiman Addonia, published October 25, 2018 by Graywolf Press. The book was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. It follows " two siblings attempting to find stability within the chaos of a [refugee] camp."
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Tanzanian-born British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah who the Swedish Academy members praised "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents." The winner was announced on October 7, 2021, by Mats Malm, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.
