Abdulrazak Gurnah, writer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Abdulrazak Gurnah is emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Literatures at the University of Kent and the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Literature.

Born in Zanzibar in 1948, the second of six children, Abdulrazak grew up in the dying days of the island’s status as a British protectorate before independence was declared in 1963. The revolution which followed made Zanzibar an undesirable and unsafe place to live in for young men of Arab heritage. In 1967, he left to seek opportunities in Britain.

He subsidised his studies through a series of low paid jobs which included strawberry picking, factory work and time as a hospital porter. In the evenings he was studying at night school and after gaining a PhD in English, he joined the University of Kent, eventually becoming a Professor.

Alongside his academic career, Abdulrazak was writing and it took him twelve years to find a publisher for his 1987 debut novel, Memory of Departure.

He has published ten more novels since then, including 1994’s Paradise and 2001’s By the Sea (short and longlisted for the Booker Prize respectively) which explore themes of exile, displacement, belonging and colonialism. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work and “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.

He lives in Kent, with his wife, the Guyanese-born scholar, Denise de Caires Narain.

DISC ONE: Hit the Road Jack - Ray Charles DISC TWO: Petite Fleur - Sidney Bechet DISC THREE: Nipepee - Seif Salim DISC FOUR: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7 - 1. Allegro maestoso. Composed by Clara Schumann. Performed by Isata Kanneh-Mason (piano) and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Holly Mathieson DISC FIVE: A Day in the Life - The Beatles DISC SIX: Kaira - Toumani Diabaté DISC SEVEN: So What - Miles Davis DISC EIGHT: Folon - Salif Keita

BOOK CHOICE: That Glimpse of Truth: The 100 Finest Short Stories Ever Written selected by David Miller LUXURY ITEM: A nail clipper CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Petite Fleur - Sidney Bechet

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What is love?
0:03.0	Is it chemistry, fate or a disaster waiting to happen?
0:07.0	Sometimes you mistake other things for love.
0:10.0	Join me, Ryland, on my new podcast as I ask experts and a few familiar faces what love really means.
0:16.3	Because it turns out it's a bit more complicated than happily ever after.
0:20.7	You should think of it as the daily commitment you make to someone that you care about.
0:25.2	Ryland, how to be in love. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.2	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:35.1	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
0:38.8	Every week, I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:43.8	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:46.6	And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:51.3	I hope you enjoy listening.
1:17.1	Music original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the writer Abdul Razak Gernar.
1:19.3	A Zanzibari-born British author.
1:24.9	He's a Booker Prize nominee, Emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Literatures at the University of Kent,
1:28.3	and, as of 2021, a Nobel Prize winner. He was born in 1948 and left Zanzibar when he was still a teenager.
1:33.3	Leaving behind the upheaval that gripped his home country after the 1964 revolution,
1:38.3	he arrived in the UK with few connections.
1:41.3	As he began to build a new life in a strange country whilst facing a prolonged
1:45.5	period of poverty and alienation, he started writing as a way of untangling his own story.
1:52.2	Identity, memory and the migrant experience are recurring themes in his work, which includes the
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 7 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.