Abdulrazak Gurnah will be published in Portugal in 2022
The Nobel Prize for Literature 2021 will be published by Cavalo de Ferro.
Abdulrazak Gurnah will have four works translated into Portuguese. The first, “Afterlives”, arrives in February 2022. This is followed by “Paradise” (May 2022), “By the Sea” (September 2022) and “Desertion” (2023).
According to Diogo Madre Deus, editor of Cavalo de Ferro, a seal of the Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Portugal, “it is an absolute privilege” to be able to publish a work by the first black writer to be recognized by the Swedish Academy in more than 30 years, after the Nigerian Wole Soyinka in 1986.
“An important work, which helps to rethink the issues that are at the center of concerns in the world today, with a voice that still insists on being considered peripheral”.
Abdulrazak Gurnah, born in 1948 in Zanzibar, Tanzania, has lived in the UK since his teens.
The Nobel prize awarded to him on 7 October was justified “for his uncommitted and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of refugees in the space between cultures and continents”.
According to the Swedish Academy, “Gurnah’s dedication to truth and his aversion to simplification are impressive. This can make him dark and uncompromising, while following the fates of desires with great compassion and uncompromising commitment.”
The academy also highlighted, in its work, “an endless exploration driven by intellectual passion”, which is present in all its books, namely in its most recent novel, “Afterlives”.