This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2001.
The play – for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss breakfast and lunch.
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copies or do any other task required of him, refusing with the words "I would prefer not to."
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.
Raj Kamal Jha is an Indian newspaper editor and novelist writing in English. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express. He has written six novels that have been translated into more than 12 languages. His journalism and fiction have won national and international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize; Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize; Tata Literature Live! Book of The Year; the International Press Institute India Award for Excellence in Journalism; and the Mumbai Press Club Journalist of the Year award. In September 2021, Jha was awarded Editor of The Year by the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association Annual Leadership Awards.
The Bayero University Kano (BUK) is a university situated in Kano, Kano State, Nigeria. It was founded in 1975, when it was renamed from Bayero University College and upgraded from University College to University. It is the first university in Kano State, North-western Nigeria.
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.
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi is the 1997 debut novel by Dutch author Arthur Japin. The novel tells the story of two Ashanti princes, Kwame Poku and Kwasi Boachi, who were taken from what is today Ghana and given to the Dutch king William II in 1837 as a surety in a business transaction between the Dutch and Ashanti Empire. The two boys are raised and educated in the Netherlands, after which Kwame returns to Africa while Kwasi continues his education in Weimar Germany and then takes a position in the Dutch East Indies. The novel is a postcolonial depiction of the Dutch colonial past. It quickly became a bestseller and was translated worldwide, and is now considered a classic of Dutch modern literature.
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.
The Katara Prize for Arabic Novel is an Arabic literary prize based in Qatar. It was established in 2014 by the Katara Cultural Village. The total prize pool is $650,000 and the main prize $200,000, making it one of the richest literary prizes in the world. One of its sponsors is UNESCO. The winning novels will be translated into five languages - including French and English.
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." The prize was announced by the Swedish Academy on 5 October 2017.
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.
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.
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.
Jane Bryce is a British writer, journalist, literary and cultural critic, as well as an academic. She was born and raised in Tanzania, has lived in Italy, the UK and Nigeria, and since 1992 has been based in Barbados. Her writing for a wide range of publications has focused on contemporary African and Caribbean fiction, postcolonial cinema and creative writing, and she is Professor Emerita of African Literature and Cinema at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.
