Step forward, everyone's favourite - Abdulrazak Gurnah.


You have never heard of him, have never read him, never will.

"Gurnah was born in Tanzania in 1948, but fled to Britain as a teenager. While his first language is Swahili, he writes mainly in Eng­lish, with some Arabic.  He received the prize “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.

ZZzzzzzzz...... Back to sleep, everyone. A case of 'read the poster/publicity gush - read the book/s."

Frank wrote on Oct 8^th, 2021 at 6:13pm:

Step forward, everyone's favourite - Abdulrazak Gurnah. You have never heard of him, have never read him, never will. "Gurnah was born in Tanzania in 1948, but fled to Britain as a teenager. While his first language is Swahili, he writes mainly in Eng­lish, with some Arabic.  He received the prize “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. ZZzzzzzzz...... Back to sleep, everyone. A case of 'read the poster/publicity gush - read the book/s."

frank,

I saw an impromptu media interview with him, on his UK property, on SBS news.



I don't know, but, does he refer to himself as a moslem ?

If he does, then Abdulrazak Gurnah is a follower of ISLAM,
and imo, that is nothing to be proud of.


As a follower of ISLAM [if he is] we know, that he, as an individual, will revere.....

ISLAM [what ISLAM teaches],
and Allah,
and Mohammed,
and the contents of the Koran,
and ISLAMIC law.

Milan Kundera: The Nobel Prize for Literature Winner We Never Had
Few writers in our time were more committed to the novel or had more idealism about the heights the form could scale.

How should one remember Kundera, now that his own end, after 90 years of history, has arrived? As a supreme anatomist of power? For his irony and playfulness, his cynical—though never unromantic—dissections of love? The strange sparse music of his books, his hatred of kitsch, his demonic delight in outraging our delusions? Will he be remembered at all, other than as a period piece? In a time of competing fundamentalisms—religious and political—it seems unlikely his posthumous reputation will have an easy ride, though as long as political or personal lies exist his work will have things to tell us. “The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” he famously wrote, and amnesia, it’s clear, is never out of fashion. The dream of communism—with its pat denial of human nature and its insistence that “real communism has never been tried”—refuses to disappear, whatever the car-crash with reality which invariably follows. In the world of Kundera’s books, there’s no divine justice and no crime’s ever properly redressed. Things merely fade over time, the world moves on, and people are never brutal enough with themselves to learn the lessons of experience. “History is as light as individual human life,” he wrote, “unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.” Should the same prove true of Kundera’s novels—more pertinent than ever as today’s clutch of dogmas press their shrill, mirthless suits for our surrender—then the joke, not a very funny one, will be on us.
https://quillette.com/2023/07/11/milan-kundera-the-nobel-prize-for-literature-winner-we-never-had/

It is rare to see a book transition well to the screen but the movie Unbearable Lightness of Being, based on his book ( and foll oi wing it quite closely) was a triumph.

His other books are also very good, well worth reading and mulling over.

Frank wrote on Aug 3^rd, 2023 at 3:59pm:

Milan Kundera: The Nobel Prize for Literature Winner We Never Had Few writers in our time were more committed to the novel or had more idealism about the heights the form could scale. How should one remember Kundera, now that his own end, after 90 years of history, has arrived? As a supreme anatomist of power? For his irony and playfulness, his cynical—though never unromantic—dissections of love? The strange sparse music of his books, his hatred of kitsch, his demonic delight in outraging our delusions? Will he be remembered at all, other than as a period piece? In a time of competing fundamentalisms—religious and political—it seems unlikely his posthumous reputation will have an easy ride, though as long as political or personal lies exist his work will have things to tell us. “The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” he famously wrote, and amnesia, it’s clear, is never out of fashion. The dream of communism—with its pat denial of human nature and its insistence that “real communism has never been tried”—refuses to disappear, whatever the car-crash with reality which invariably follows. In the world of Kundera’s books, there’s no divine justice and no crime’s ever properly redressed. Things merely fade over time, the world moves on, and people are never brutal enough with themselves to learn the lessons of experience. “History is as light as individual human life,” he wrote, “unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.” Should the same prove true of Kundera’s novels—more pertinent than ever as today’s clutch of dogmas press their shrill, mirthless suits for our surrender—then the joke, not a very funny one, will be on us. https://quillette.com/2023/07/11/milan-kundera-the-nobel-prize-for-literature-winner-we-never-had/ It is rare to see a book transition well to the screen but the movie Unbearable Lightness of Being, based on his book ( and foll oi wing it quite closely) was a triumph. His other books are also very good, well worth reading and mulling over.

The late, lamented Milan Kundera thought it was only a matter of time before the Western bourgeoisie, having shed the final vestiges of its cultural inheritance, would flock to exhibitions of garden gnomes, fluffy kittens and children in tears, while shunning those of Giotto, Titian, Monet and similar rubbish.

Had Kundera seen the ads being run by the Yes campaign, he would have known that in Australian politics, the triumph of kitsch has come even sooner than he dared imagine.

It may be that barrages of kitsch-laden ads will convince voters to accept irreversible changes to our political institutions. But it is not irrational to place some confidence in the laconic common sense that was once regarded as the quintessence of our national character.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/common-sense-was-once-quintessentially-australian-not-any-more/news-story/1ab3b3ff208ac8403224b0b14863c5ec

One of the reasons for anger at the theory-ridden English departments of our day is that they sold out the richness of literature for a small number of crude ideas—gender, race, class, and the rest of the detritus—and hence gave up their cultural birthright for a pot of message.

One of the most important functions of literature in the current day is to cultivate a healthy distrust of the ideas thrown up by journalism and social science. Novels and poems can be the antidote here. “The novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity,” Milan Kundera writes. “The novelist says to the reader: things are not as simple as you think.” When he is working well, the good novelist persuasively establishes that life is more surprising, bizarre, fascinating, complex, and rich than any shibboleth, concept, or theory used to explain it. A literary education establishes a strong taste for the endless variousness of life; it teaches how astonishing reality is—and how obdurate to even the most ingenious attempts to grasp its mechanics or explain any serious portion of it! “A man is more complicated than his thoughts,” wrote Valéry, which, if you think about it, is happily so.
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2008/6/a-literary-education

Gerald Murnane speaks about life, writing ahead of Nobel Prize for Literature announcement
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-09/gerald-murnane-nobel-prize-literature-announcement/104424876


Chinese author Can Xue is favourite to win 2024 Nobel prize in literature
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/08/chinese-author-can-xue-favourite-to-win-2024-nobel-prize-in-literature-haruki-murakami-margaret-atwood




Can Xue, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, César Aira, Gerald Murnane and Thomas Pynchon are among the authors most likely to win this year’s Nobel prize in literature, according to bookies.

Frank wrote on Oct 8^th, 2021 at 6:13pm:

Step forward, everyone's favourite - Abdulrazak Gurnah. You have never heard of him, have never read him, never will. "Gurnah was born in Tanzania in 1948, but fled to Britain as a teenager. While his first language is Swahili, he writes mainly in Eng­lish, with some Arabic.  He received the prize “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. ZZzzzzzzz...... Back to sleep, everyone. A case of 'read the poster/publicity gush - read the book/s."

Soooo.... all you multiculti fetishists, what did you think of Abdulrazak Gurnah's books, which you must have avidly read since he won the Nobel.

Bbwian? Mothra? Sad Skippy's Saggy Sack? Thick Smiff? Duckwit? Karnal - he's tinted so you MUST HAVE consumed him (ahem).

Frank wrote on Oct 10^th, 2024 at 3:13am:

Gerald Murnane speaks about life, writing ahead of Nobel Prize for Literature announcement https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-09/gerald-murnane-nobel-prize-literature-announcement/104424876 Chinese author Can Xue is favourite to win 2024 Nobel prize in literature https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/08/chinese-author-can-xue-favourite-to-win-2024-nobel-prize-in-literature-haruki-murakami-margaret-atwood Can Xue, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, César Aira, Gerald Murnane and Thomas Pynchon are among the authors most likely to win this year’s Nobel prize in literature, according to bookies.

The author of "The Vegetarian" and "The White Book" wins this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. She becomes only the 18th woman to win the prize.



Because gender identity is a very important indicator of artistic merit. Oh, yes.