Nearly four decades after Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy at Stockholm, Sweden, conferred this most prestigious award in Literature to Abdukrazak Gurnah, Tanzanian writer and novelist, as well the second black African, whose 1994 Paradise clinched 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.’ in the previous year. 

Before Gurnah, the Nobel Prize in Literature came to Africa a couple of times with the Egyptian Naguiba Mahfouz, the South African Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Cotzee and the Nigerian Wole Soyinka receiving the prize at different points in history. The talks, debates, and excitement that greeted the declaration last year, 7th of October was, however, an overwhelmingly tremendous one among scholars and enthusiasts of literature, an aftereffect which could only be matched by the world’s response when the prize was first awarded to the first man of (black) colour in 1950. 

Given the long history of the award’s bestowal to mostly non-Africans, reinforced by the fact that the frontline writers of African literature like Adichie, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o inter alia would be the Academy’s favourite if it were to be zoned to the continent, Gurnah’s unanticipated but deserved victory was a particularly surprising one. 

In their years of reading, writing and scholarship, many people – writers and teachers of literature unexcluded – have claimed to be in the dark as to the person and the literary oeuvre of the winner until declared. This leaves just a smidgen of the populace in the know, a fact corroborated by an opinion poll on the official website of the Nobel Prize where only 7 percentage voted to have read Gurnah while the preponderant 93 percentage hulked in the otherwise direction.

Gurnah’s nearly unperceived presence in the world of literature – African literature in especial – is not, it must be admitted, a negation of his years-long intellectual commitment to the field, nor is it, in fact, an attestation to the lie (peddled as truth) that his works are inferior in quality, merit and significance. Such undermining merely stems from a place of envy, bitterness and uncriticalness (sic). No, it is rather a story of hard work, passion and resilience, a definitive case of an unduly acknowledged penman who persevered but thrived in obscurity, one whose long-deserved reckoning took nearly forever to materialise – but finally did materialise. 

Alternatively, the younger generation must imbibe these virtues of patience, perseverance and long-suffering in their unbridled ambition to ‘become’. They must remember that Rome was not built in a day and that it is only through continuous and consistent efforts that they can soar farther and closer to the sky of their dreams.

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