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.
Leila Fuad Aboulela is a fiction writer, essayist, and playwright of Sudanese origin based in Aberdeen, Scotland. She grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and moved to Scotland in 1990 where she began her literary career. Until 2023, Aboulela has published six novels and several short stories, which have been translated into fifteen languages. Her most popular novels, Minaret (2005) and The Translator (1999) both feature the stories of Muslim women in the UK and were longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and Orange Prize. Aboulela’s works have been included in publications such as Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Washington Post and The Guardian. BBC Radio has adapted her work extensively and broadcast a number of her plays, including The Insider, The Mystic Life and the historical drama The Lion of Chechnya. The five-part radio serialization of her 1999 novel The Translator was short-listed for the Race In the Media Award (RIMA).
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.
Desertion is a 2005 novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. It was published in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest, and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.
Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-American writer. Her novels include Beneath the Lion's Gaze (2010) and The Shadow King (2019), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker 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.
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.
Namwali Serpell is an American and Zambian writer who teaches in the United States. In April 2014, she was named on Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Her short story "The Sack" won the 2015 Caine Prize for African fiction in English. In 2020, Serpell won the Belles-lettres category Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2019 for her debut novel The Old Drift.
The Memory of Love is a 2010 novel by Aminatta Forna about the experiences of three men in Sierra Leone. In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
Beneath the Lion's Gaze is a 2010 novel by Ethiopian-American writer Maaza Mengiste. It describes a family in Addis Ababa in 1974, living through the transition from emperor Haile Selassie to rule by the Derg. Favorably reviewed, Beneath the Lion's Gaze was a nominee for several prizes.
Girl, Woman, Other is the eighth novel by Bernardine Evaristo. Published in 2019 by Hamish Hamilton, it follows the lives of 12 characters in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. The book was the co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments.
The Shadow King is a 2019 novel by Ethiopian-American writer Maaza Mengiste, published by W. W. Norton & Company on September 24, 2019. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.
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.
Admiring Silence is a 1996 novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. It is Gurnah's fifth novel and was first published by The New Press on 1 November 1996.
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.
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.
