Riverhead Books has obtained the US rights to three novels by the Tanzanian Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah. The books are his latest and tenth novel Afterlives, By the Sea (2001), and Desertion (2005). There are no publication dates yet for the latter two, but Afterlives will be released in August 2022. The book was published last year in the UK by Bloomsbury.
Early this month, Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the second Black African laureate. The Swedish Academy chose him “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”
Since winning the coveted prize, Gurnah’s profile has risen. His novels, though, have been hard to come because most of them are out of print and the rights returned to him.
According to The New York Times, Gurnah’s agent Peter Straus since sold foreign rights to his books in 30 countries and fielded bids from six American publishers.
Read More
– Your Guide to Nobel Prize Winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s 10 Novels
– Reading Abdulrazak Gurnah: 22 Essays on the 2021 Nobel Prize Winner’s Works
One Response
Shanghai Translation Publishing House has announced that it has acquired the rights to publish Chinese translations (using the PRC’s official, simplified script) of ten novels by the new Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah.
As reported at the web site that bears my name, it intends to publish five of Gurnah’s novels within second half of 2022.
Bruce Humes