Zanzibar-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has been announced as the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature by the Swedish Academy.

Mr Gurnah was awarded “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,” during a ceremony held in Stockholm on Thursday.

The author of 10 novels and a number of short stories, he served as a Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, Canterbury until his retirement.

This week, the Nobel Laureates have been announced by the Nobel Prize committee.

The winners of the 5 categories created in creator Alfred Nobel’s will are individuals who have contributed greatly to humankind in the preceding year.

On Monday, the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine went to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body processes senses. 

Three scientists whose work helped to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding the frontier on climate change knowledge, took the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday.

Then on Wednesday, the prize committee announced Benjamin List and David WC MacMillan as winners of the Nobel Prize for chemistry.