Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah says ‘writing cannot be just about polemics’

The Zanzibari novelist spoke of migration, colonialism and how he became a writer in his acceptance lecture on Tuesdsay

The Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, who fled Zanzibar for England in the 1960s, has spoken of how he began writing in refusal of the self-assured summaries of people who despised and belittled us".

Gurnah, who was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in October for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents", was speaking during his Nobel lecture on Tuesday.