Abdulrazak Gurnah

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the writer Abdulrazak Gurner. A Zanzibari born British author, he's a Booker Prize nominee, Emeritus Professor of Post Colonial Literatures at the University of Kent, and, as of twenty twenty one, a Nobel Prize winner.

Presenter0:58

He was born in 1948 and left Zanzibar when he was still a teenager. Leaving behind the upheaval that gripped his home country after the 1964 revolution, he arrived in the UK with few connections. As he began to build a new life in a strange country whilst facing a prolonged period of poverty and alienation, he started writing as a way of untangling his own story.

Presenter1:22

Identity, memory, and the migrant experience are recurring themes in his work, which includes the novels Paradise and By the Sea. His heroes are often of the unsung variety hospital orderlies, canteen workers, housewives but by unearthing the intricate histories that lie just under the surface of their apparently small lives, he affords them the emotional complexity and humanity of an epic hero.

Presenter1:47

Life as a Nobel laureate has brought him to new readers all over the world. His books have been translated into forty languages, including his first, Swahili, for the very first time. He says I want to entertain people, but I also want to advance the way we all understand things.

Presenter2:04

just one little inch forward with each book.

Presenter2:07

Abdulrazak Gona welcomed it as island discs.

Abdulrazak Gurnah2:10

Thank you very much.

Presenter2:11

So your first novel, Memory of Departure, was published almost forty years ago, and this year you've published your eleventh, Theft. I always think of that moment of releasing new work as a kind of edge of the diving board moment. You know, it's about to land with the public. How does it feel to you when a new book is about to come out?

Abdulrazak Gurnah2:29

It gets increasingly less worrying. I think partly it's because as each book comes out you come to understand that you have readers who are kind of travelling with you in a way, you know, but in addition to that, there are always reviews and things like that, so you begin to have a sense of how the book is being received. Feels good.

Presenter2:51

And of course, you know, more attention than ever after being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2021. You really didn't believe it at first, did you? What actually happened? How did you hear about it?

Abdulrazak Gurnah3:01

Yeah, well I don't think there are many people who'll say when that phone call comes, Oh, at last

Abdulrazak Gurnah3:07

Where have you been all this time? I think it'll be a surprise for most people, but it was a great joy because of the nature of the thing, because of what it is.

Presenter3:16

Where did you get the phone call?

Abdulrazak Gurnah3:17

I was at home, almost lunchtime, and I was just sort of making a cup of tea prior to checking out what's in the fridge, that kind of thing. And the phone rang, and at first I thought it was one of these annoying cold calls that we get now. And I found over the years that if you keep quiet, they go away. This one didn't. And eventually somebody spoke and said, is this Abdurasa Gourna? And I said, who are you? What do you want? Kind of thing. Trying to be rude to chase this person away. Then he announced that you have been awarded this. And I thought, no, no, come on. Stop it.

Speaker 33:25

Yeah.

Speaker 33:41

Yeah.

Presenter3:54

When did it sink in? When did you realize that actually this was for real?

Abdulrazak Gurnah3:54

What

Abdulrazak Gurnah3:57

He said, We're just about to make an announcement. If you go to your computer and uh log into our website, you'll be able to watch me s announcing this. So I did, I went to the computer and got there just as he came out onto the stage and started speaking in Swedish, but my name was in that Swedish spiel. And then the phone rang immediately, so

Presenter4:20

And I bet it didn't stop ringing. How long did that go on for?

Abdulrazak Gurnah4:22

It did it went on for quite a while. In fact, in the end, I unplugged the phone.

Presenter4:27

I mean, just an incredible achievement, so exciting. And to see all those new editions, what was it like for you to see the Swahili versions of your books for the first time?

Abdulrazak Gurnah4:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was it's great, it's wonderful, obviously. I mean, and this is what a writer wants. And I would have thought any writer, you'd want your your work to be disseminated as thoroughly, as widely as possible. And the Swahili translation was also something special, because although people were reading the books, not everybody can read in English. So this way it makes it available and importantly, it makes it available as a book that younger people can read at school and this kind of thing.

Presenter5:03

You're sharing your discs with us today. How big a role has music played for you? Is it important?

Abdulrazak Gurnah5:09

It is important, and it isn't always important because uh I sit there and listen to it. Some of it is something that is going on in the world I'm in as well, as well as uh music that um that I love to sit quietly and listen to. When I was growing up there there was no T V, it was just the radio, and actually there was only more or less one radio station. So whatever was played there was the music that uh we heard.

Presenter5:16

As well.

Presenter5:31

Well, we can't wait to hear your desert island discs today. So, why don't we get started with your first choice? What have you gone for and why?

Abdulrazak Gurnah5:37

So I thought I'd start with Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles. Part of the town that I lived in, that I grew up in, was born in and lived in as as as a youth until I left, is called Malindi. And there were lots of cafes, not cafes like Paris cafes, these are cafes where people who worked in the docks, which is roughly this area, would probably go to have their lunch or to get a snack or something like that. And they all had radios. That is to say they had amplifiers outside. So you even if you're walking in the streets, you'd be hearing the radio. And as I said, there's only one radio station. Imagine the terrific sense of walking through the streets, past this cafe after cafe after cafe, and all of them are playing Hit the Road Jack.

Speaker 36:24

Hoo-hoo-hoo!

Presenter6:25

Pottery.

Speaker 36:26

Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more. Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more. What you say? Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more. Hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more.

Abdulrazak Gurnah6:37

Hey people!

Speaker 36:48

Oh woman, oh woman, don't treat me so mean. You're the meanest old woman that I've ever seen. I can't skip you.

Presenter6:56

Ray Charles and Hit the Road, Jack. And you're saying, Abdul Razak Gurner, that you can see yourself walking up.

Abdulrazak Gurnah7:01

Yes, I can see myself walking through the streets there and listening to this and bobbing my head up and down.

Presenter7:07

The magic of Rachel's.

Abdulrazak Gurnah7:09

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter7:09

So you were born in Zanzibar town in nineteen forty eight, the second of six children. When you think back to your home and your childhood, what comes back to you first?

Abdulrazak Gurnah7:19

Yeah, I think playing in the streets there it was quite safe. There were very, very few cars or anything like that. So, you know but during holidays then gangs of children would congregate. We'd be allowed to stay out till nobody bothered us, you know, in the evenings and that kind of thing.

Presenter7:34

And you were the second eldest in the family. What was your role among the siblings? Were you one of the leaders?

Abdulrazak Gurnah7:39

Punchbag

Abdulrazak Gurnah7:41

But there are a lot of other children. Many of them have remained friends for life, even though we've all been scattered all over the place. We know about each other.

Presenter7:49

Your father was a trader. Does that mean that you lived, what, close to the the water? You lived near

Abdulrazak Gurnah7:54

That's right. His work was largely to buy the products of the sea, really. And every year these boatloads of people would come from various parts of the Indian Ocean, from Somalia, from Southern Arabia, from the Gulf and so on. And they would bring a variety of products, fish, cured fish of some kind or another, dates, etc. And his business was buying this in bulk and then retailing it to outlets, to shops and so on. That was his work.

Presenter8:23

And so for you that meant that you were growing up in a very multicultural, multilingual environment, I'm imagining.

Abdulrazak Gurnah8:28

Absolutely multi-religious as well. Because we were so, so near the docks, I mean literally you could see the docks from the house like that, then any open area near us would become some kind of uh impromptu campsite for these sailors. Because this wasn't kind of a particularly cultured invasion of people across the ocean. These were sailors, you know, rough hewn, dirty, you know, salties or whatever you call those things.

Presenter8:30

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:50

Dirty

Presenter8:54

You dedicated your book-anominated novel Paradise to your mother, Salma. Tell me about her. What was she like?

Abdulrazak Gurnah9:00

She uh had six of us and uh I think quite possibly it uh it was uh difficult. Her health did not um benefit as a result. But she was all right, she was okay. She and my aunt, her sister that is, were both um valued very much the possibility of education for us, partly because they were not allowed to go to school.

Presenter9:09

Yeah.

Speaker 29:09

Uh

Presenter9:24

Was she able to read herself?

Abdulrazak Gurnah9:26

No, she wasn't able to read. She learned to write her name because during the campaign for decolonization, when for the first time women were allowed to vote, she wanted obviously to use her vote. But in order to register for the vote, you had to either sign your name or do the thumbprint thing. She was determined that she's not going to do a thumbprint like a beast. So she learned to write her name. But that's about all she could do.

Presenter9:55

Alright, it's time for some more music, Abdul Razak Gurner. Your second choice today. What are we going to hear and why?

Abdulrazak Gurnah10:00

We're going to hear Petit Fleur by Sidney Becher. I heard this for the first time again it would have been that same sort of time early 1960s at the time we were being I think we were being wooed by the United States and by the British with the establishment of the USIS as it was called United States Information Service established a a kind of library place we could go read newspapers listen to music and this kind of thing and the British had another one which was doing the same thing

Presenter10:32

Did you go to both? Did you get to

Abdulrazak Gurnah10:33

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't easy to get hold of reading materials. It wasn't easy to get books. And most of us did not have, I mean, we didn't have a record player at home. So the idea of you could go into a place and pick music and listen to it. So I didn't know anything about jazz, but that's because it was American USIS, there's a lot of jazz music. And one of the first things I heard was this Sidney Becher Petit Fleur. And I was drawn to it because I thought, Bechet, that sounds like a Swahili name. I wonder if that's one of us. But of course, it's a French name. Anyway, so I heard Petit Fleur and it's stayed with me ever since.

Presenter10:36

Mm.

Presenter12:10

Sidney Boucher and Petit Fleur. So you picked that up in the American Library, Abdul Razakana. Did the British Library have records that you could listen to as well, or?

Abdulrazak Gurnah12:18

No, they had newspapers. Papers, magazines and some books.

Presenter12:20

That's not bad.

Presenter12:23

But the Americans won out with the Jazz, did they?

Abdulrazak Gurnah12:25

Did they take one home?

Presenter12:27

Aha, okay.

Abdulrazak Gurnah12:28

We could actually take it out, but you didn't have a record player at home, so that wasn't any good.

Presenter12:32

So tell me, when you were growing up, you mentioned spending time with your your mother and your aunt in particular. W were they the people who nurtured your love of storytelling?

Abdulrazak Gurnah12:42

That's the way it worked for a lot of people really, uh because children were the responsibility of the women and they loved telling stories.

Presenter12:47

Uh

Presenter12:50

What kind of stories did they tell you?

Abdulrazak Gurnah12:51

Probably the stories they themselves had been told. Some of them were games. I remember one in particular that we loved and loved and loved. A big python has been sighted somewhere out of town, and it's getting closer and closer. So all the place names are mentioned, and we as children are kind of quaking with terror. It's now down the street, it's now there, he's climbing up the stairs, and this kind of thing.

Presenter13:14

So learning about building anticipation right from the beginning. You mentioned that you went to the local Quran school when you were quite little, so five. And then I think you started primary school, your colonial education, after that. So what was on the syllabus there?

Speaker 313:16

Yeah.

Abdulrazak Gurnah13:31

In the early days, it was all Swahili, so we were learning to read in readers in Kuswahili. And it was quite fun, because most of us didn't have books. In our house, there were no books. And most of the children I was at school with, they didn't have books at home. So primary schools, all our teachers were local teachers, no European teachers. And everything was taught in Kuswahili. Until at a certain stage, as you were approaching the end of primary school, we knew that we were going to do an examination, a little bit like the 11 plus, a national examination that everybody would have to do. And that was going to be arithmetic and English. And the reason for that is to actually select students who will then go on to secondary school. And there was only one secondary school for boys and one secondary school for girls. Well, they didn't really want to educate us particularly. They just wanted to produce a few clerks. And so for that, all you needed to do was to learn to read and write. But then if you were lucky enough to be one of those who did go on to secondary school, then it really was like that. So 60 students out of the whole country went on to secondary school.

Speaker 213:52

Okay.

Presenter14:19

Oh wow, so so

Speaker 214:20

Uh

Speaker 214:22

Timbuktu.

Abdulrazak Gurnah14:38

All your teachers there were Europeans, and none of them could speak Swahili. So there you go. Your first eight years in primary school, you're being taught in Swahili. You go there and suddenly somebody's standing in front of the class giving you a history class in English or an algebra class in English and you don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Presenter14:57

And you mentioned that, you know, your mother saw education as the key to a better life. So you grew up with a a strong sense of that. Did you internalize that quite quickly, do you think?

Abdulrazak Gurnah15:06

I don't even think it was as much as uh something about a better life. I think they just valued it in itself and thought it was a good thing. And I think it's precisely because it was denied them, the two sisters as well, my mother and aunt, lamented this. I remember in my childhood lamented the fact that they were denied this. It was something that was deep.

Abdulrazak Gurnah15:27

And so they wanted their their children to

Abdulrazak Gurnah15:30

participate in this good thing.

Presenter15:33

You mentioned that books weren't all that easy to come by. What do you remember reading and and loving as a child? Went the first time that a book kind of really captured your imagination?

Abdulrazak Gurnah15:42

I remember the Arabian Night stories. In a way it was rather surprising,'cause those were some of the stories that were being told by people who couldn't read.

Abdulrazak Gurnah15:51

Like my parents. In other words, these had become oral stories and were being transmitted orally. People were telling these stories and then to actually discover and read a book and oh, I've heard that one before

Speaker 215:51

Uh

Abdulrazak Gurnah16:02

But really the only books we could read were books that were made available to us at school, at least until the ages of maybe about thirteen or so.

Presenter16:11

And what kind of collection was that? I'm wondering what was in the library. You know, you described this.

Abdulrazak Gurnah16:15

What library? There's no library, just just a school cupboard, you know?

Presenter16:19

Okay.

Abdulrazak Gurnah16:20

And I bet you these would have been the same books that were distributed in the West Indies, in India, and in other British colonies. They were produced as a result of policy decisions made in London. Very often they were abridged, very, very abridged, and they were kind of what you would call classics, I suppose. Oliver Twist, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, that kind of stuff.

Presenter16:43

The legacy of the Victorian Age.

Abdulrazak Gurnah16:44

That's about it.

Presenter16:46

In a colonial cupboard in every corner of the world.

Abdulrazak Gurnah16:47

Every colour.

Abdulrazak Gurnah16:48

Yeah, and the adventure stories. In fact, one of the um pleasures of coming to England was finding so many books to read and unexpected bonuses of being here in England.

Presenter17:02

It's time for some more music, Abdul Razak, your third disc today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it with you to your island?

Abdulrazak Gurnah17:09

This is a song Nipe, which means fan me, and it's sung by a man called Sef Salim, who's a very good musician. He played the oud and he sang and he wrote songs. This is one of his songs. He was also an artist, I mean a painter. He was also a teacher. In fact, the first time I met him, as it were, was when he came to our school as a trainee teacher to do teaching practice. He took us for art classes. And he wrote and sang this song Nipe, which is a kind of elegy. He's singing to his lover. And clearly he's dying. And he's saying, fan me as well, make me comfortable. But in the meantime, he declares his love for her. And sadly, Sef Salim himself died pretty soon after that.

Speaker 317:43

Uh

Presenter18:27

Save Salem and Nipe.

Presenter18:30

So Abdulrazak Gurner, in 1964, Zanzibar underwent a revolution. You were fifteen, I think, at the time?

Presenter18:39

What effect did that have on you and your family?

Abdulrazak Gurnah18:42

Well, the main effect was my father's business.

Abdulrazak Gurnah18:45

In terms of what happened to my family, that was no longer, it was taken away from him. No private businesses were allowed to exist. The Muslim trade was also ended. So those people coming to Tuzan, but were not allowed to arrive, as it were. They could not come anymore. They ended up going to Mombasa and Tonga and other places on the mainland. But more importantly, almost everything else was also shut down. Businesses, jobs, there was a great deal of violence. Schools were shut. It was a state of terror, really. People imprisoned, people killed, and so on.

Presenter18:47

Mm-hmm.

Presenter19:16

Really?

Presenter19:20

Did you witness any of that violence? I mean, how close to you obviously devastating for your father to to lose his business and all of that tumult around you, but but how close were you to the violence that went on?

Abdulrazak Gurnah19:30

Well actually my brother and I, we were in Dar es Salaam staying with uh relatives there, school holidays. The first we heard about the revolution was on the radio. Uh we were actually at the at the beach in a cafe listening to I told you cafes all had radios. So there was a radio there and there was the news being announced. So we went back to the city and tried to get um a flight back. Stupid. But anyway, that's what you think. But the airport was closed because of the violence. So we had to wait for about three days, I think, before we managed to get a flight on a little plane that was carrying newspapers or something there. So when we arrived, the very worst of the violence was over, but you could see bullet holes in walls and all this kind of thing. And of course a lot of people were still in in jail, including my uncle.

Speaker 319:45

Yeah.

Speaker 219:45

Yeah.

Abdulrazak Gurnah20:21

who would remain in jail for two years.

Presenter20:23

He was a policeman. He was a policeman.

Abdulrazak Gurnah20:24

And there was curfew everywhere and all this kind of thing. So I didn't actually the worst of the violence happened in the first three days. It was all over after three days. At least it was all over in the sense of the fighting. What continued for several months and years was the you know arrests and the state violence that was taking place.

Presenter20:35

Mm-hmm.

Presenter20:42

But totally disorientating for you. I mean, to to come home and then it just must have felt like the world was turned upside down.

Abdulrazak Gurnah20:49

Well, we were very frightened, but we were we were fortunate in that every every member of immediate member of my family was was fine.

Presenter20:56

And you know you said everything shut down. Did that include school?

Abdulrazak Gurnah21:00

Yeah, schools shut down because uh one of the first things that they did, the new government, was they sent all those European teachers home. The secondary schools did not open for four months while they were trying to recruit teachers from elsewhere. And these mostly came from um sort of fraternal socialist nations as it were, because the the new government decided that it was going to be a socialist government. So we had teachers from the GDR, East Germany, we had teachers from uh

Presenter21:05

But

Abdulrazak Gurnah21:28

Czechoslovakia, as it then was?

Presenter21:30

And how was that for you? I mean

Abdulrazak Gurnah21:31

Well, it was difficult because they didn't speak Swahili and they didn't speak very good English either, so there was no way of communi.

Presenter21:38

What were you doing?

Abdulrazak Gurnah21:38

We managed, we managed.

Presenter21:41

It must have been surreal. I mean, was that how you coped with it, was to learn to laugh?

Abdulrazak Gurnah21:45

I think we were very we were very afraid, quite a lot of the time. And um we also knew that some amongst us classmates had been murdered during the fighting and some disappeared. So we we knew that um things were dangerous as it were. So everybody just shut up and got on with it.

Presenter22:07

I want to talk more about what happened next, but first, why don't we hear some music? Track number four. What are you going for?

Abdulrazak Gurnah22:11

Check it out.

Abdulrazak Gurnah22:13

Eisetter is playing this Eisetter academism.

Abdulrazak Gurnah22:17

They're a wonderful family. They were little geniuses, I think. I've known the family, well, rather, I should say that my wife, Denise, was a colleague of their mother at the University of Sussex many years ago. And so I knew her by association in a way. But since then, I've come to know her and indeed known the children. I've met several of them, and it just gives me so much pleasure to see how well they're doing and how beautifully they play. So let's hear I started playing Schumann.

Speaker 222:25

Yeah.

Speaker 322:43

Black.

Presenter23:47

Part of the first movement of Clara Schumann's piano concerto in A minor, performed by Isarta Kenner Mason, on the piano, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Holly Matheson.

Presenter24:00

Abdulrazak Gurner, when you were eighteen you and your older brother made the choice to leave Zanzibar and come to Britain. How did you decide it was the right time to go, and how difficult was it to organize?

Abdulrazak Gurnah24:11

Yeah, it was difficult to organize because the it was not possible to have uh travel documents. The security advisers for the government were from the GDR, East Germany, and they were, as you know, obsessed with making sure people don't travel, don't leave. So it meant that we had to leave in rather, well, really rather illegal ways, which I'll leave at that.

Abdulrazak Gurnah24:34

But the reason we chose to do it then was partly because we had finally persuaded our father that it's okay for us to do that and that he was willing to help us.

Presenter24:44

Why didn't he want you to go? Is he just worried about you?

Abdulrazak Gurnah24:46

We were young, I suppose. He understood that it was not going to be something easy to do. And I guess he wasn't keen to go out into the world when you don't know anything and you don't have any money. But anyway, he agreed to let it go. And the other reason he agreed to let it go is because our cousin, I mentioned my aunt a few times, this is my aunt's son. We all lived in the same house, we all grew up together. And he was at that time completing his PhD here in the UK at the University of London. So we kind of made the case and persuaded our other that, look, we when we go there, he'll be there, he'll look after us. Poor fellow. So we descended on him and he did help us. But he was completing his PhD and he was gone a few months later. So he went to work at the University of Kumasi in Ghana.

Speaker 225:03

Yeah. Williams.

Presenter25:35

So you said, understandably, your your father had been very apprehensive about the two of you leaving. How did your mother feel? Did she give you her blessing?

Abdulrazak Gurnah25:42

No.

Abdulrazak Gurnah25:43

We couldn't tell her.

Presenter25:45

Oh.

Presenter25:47

That must have been hard.

Presenter25:51

So you're leaving your parents and four siblings behind, and to all intents and purposes, at that point, there's no option to return. Uh

Abdulrazak Gurnah25:58

That's what we understood, but we didn't really understand, or at least I didn't really understand. It was really having done it, you know, eighteen, reckless, afraid of nothing as you were, until you were really faced with the reality. And you think workshops I'll tell you what, the first thing I thought when I was on my own after having been picked up from the airport by the cousin and taken to a place where we were staying, and I was n lying in bed and thinking, what have I done?

Presenter25:58

Must have felt

Presenter26:24

Yeah.

Presenter26:28

So, what were your first impressions when you landed? I mean, it must have been a complete culture shock in the first place. Well, it's mixed.

Abdulrazak Gurnah26:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was frightening, of course. But it's uh it's also to do with just being a stranger, I think, and not knowing how things work and being young. I mean, now I travel a lot and I go wherever I go, but I'm not frightened. I have a piece of plastic in my pocket, I have a bona fide passport, and I can make myself understood. I didn't have any of those things, and nor do many people when they're that age or when they're that ignorant. So it was that. It was as much as anything else, it was just not knowing how to deal with things, how to cope. And there was a certain hostility in the air, of course. You couldn't mistake it, you couldn't miss it.

Speaker 226:55

Come on.

Speaker 226:57

And

Presenter27:12

I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because it's one of the contradictions of the sixties, that when we were kind of nostalgic about it, you know, we think about the social progress and the swinging London sixties and all of that. But of course, there was massive racial tensions too. All of that is coexisting together.

Abdulrazak Gurnah27:20

Sixties and all

Abdulrazak Gurnah27:26

Yes, there was that, and also it was unexpected. I had no idea that there is this sort of a we don't want you here kind of thing.

Presenter27:33

And how quickly did that hit you?

Abdulrazak Gurnah27:34

Pretty quickly, uh very much instantly really, you understood, from various reactions, small and big. But having said that, I must say that there were also other things. There was a sense of this is an adventure. I guess there was a sense also being liberated from that terror that I've been speaking about, but all that fear, the the anxiety. So there were good things as well as troublesome things.

Presenter27:56

Let's have some more music, your fifth choice today. What's next?

Abdulrazak Gurnah27:59

This is The Beatles, a day in the Life.

Abdulrazak Gurnah28:03

And why? Because that first year when we were in England, in Canterbury, somebody at the college said there's a family that has asked us if there are any foreign students staying on over the Christmas period, who don't have any family as it were. And we said yes, then that's you two, Ahmed and I, my brother and I. So we were invited to spend Christmas Day, our first Christmas in England, with this family. If I remember correctly, there was two sons and a daughter. The eldest son was possibly about 18 or 19, something of this kind. And one of his presents was Sergeant Pepper. And so he put it on, you know, record player. And so that's the first time I heard this song. But every time I listen to this opening, I remember that family and that Christmas.

Speaker 329:06

Happen news today, oh boy

Speaker 329:12

About a lucky man who made the grave

Speaker 329:18

And though the news was rather sad

Speaker 329:24

Well I just have to learn.

Presenter29:30

The Beatles and a Day in the Life. So, Abdul Razak Gurner, you enrolled to do your A levels, but you took maths, physics, and chemistry. So, not what we might expect of a future Nobel Prize winning author. What was your thinking?

Abdulrazak Gurnah29:39

So

Abdulrazak Gurnah29:45

Well, we grew up during the campaign for decolonization, and it was kind of drummed into us, and perhaps it didn't need that much drumming, that um if you get an opportunity to study, then you must do something that's going to be useful to your country.

Abdulrazak Gurnah30:00

Who ever thought that reading literature was going to be useful to anybody? So really we were all kind of being led towards either doing science subjects, if you got the opportunity, or possibly law or something like that. And so when we came here we chose to do A-levels in those subjects. I worked pretty hard, especially when my cousin was still here with us and he just made sure we we did all the homework.

Presenter30:26

He was pushing you.

Abdulrazak Gurnah30:27

Yeah.

Presenter30:27

And how were you supporting yourself during that time?

Abdulrazak Gurnah30:30

A variety of things. I discovered, for example, that if you were still 18, if you hadn't finished your 18th year, if you joined further education, technical college, you didn't have to pay fees. So the fees I had paid came back to us. The other thing is was that we had come with 400 pounds because you needed 400 pounds to claim that you were a tourist. And so that £400 became part of what we lived on.

Presenter30:55

So was that from your dad?

Abdulrazak Gurnah30:56

Yeah. He borrowed it. Or rather somebody else gave it to us that but he promised that he would pay them back. So it was a bit of a like that. It was a loan. We shared a room, Amber and I, and I think it was twelve pounds a week. And that included breakfast and dinner as well. So we kind of dragged on like this till the summer. And then we've got jobs during the summer. Students could work during the summer.

Presenter31:03

Yeah.

Speaker 231:03

Yeah.

Speaker 331:04

Okay.

Presenter31:20

What we doing?

Abdulrazak Gurnah31:20

First we tried strawberry picking. It was back breaking. And then I got a job in a factory. So we just went on like that. And then the second year was harder. I applied for everything I could see in the newspapers. But then after a month I got a job in the hospital as an orderly in the operating theatre in Kent and Canterbury Hospital. And I stayed there for two years and a bit.

Abdulrazak Gurnah31:45

It was a a really profound experience.

Presenter31:49

In what way? Because you did go on to write about the character Dowder, a hospital orderly, in Pilgrim's Way.

Abdulrazak Gurnah31:55

Indeed, I did, yeah.

Abdulrazak Gurnah31:58

Well, because it was a world which most of us don't know about. Certainly I knew nothing about it. The very first time I was in the theatre as being kind of inducted, I suppose we would say nowadays, was an operation, was a tonsil extraction operation. And I was nearly sick. I mean, I saw many other things later, but that was my first experience. Blood, the smells, and indeed the wrecked bodies that you have to deal with. Amputations, opening up bellies. And I really learned a lot about unsocial hours and unsocial work. It's all kinds of things. Really it was it was the cur there would not have been another opportunity to come to experience all that.

Presenter32:39

So among all this, it sounds like you were working incredibly hard. How were you able to change course and study literature as you did?

Abdulrazak Gurnah32:47

I did evening classes.

Presenter32:48

And did you know straightaway that you were on the right track?

Abdulrazak Gurnah32:51

I thought, yeah, this is what I should have done from the beginning. I should not have listened to that hectoring voice that uh was saying, be something useful. I should have done this'cause this is something I get pleasure from doing and that I know I can do well.

Presenter33:04

So you obtained a Bachelor of Education from Christ Church College, Canterbury, and then a PhD, and began your career as an academic, which continued in parallel to your literary career until twenty seventeen.

Presenter33:16

Did you enjoy teaching?

Abdulrazak Gurnah33:17

Yeah, I enjoyed most of uh what it is called teaching. I like the fact that you are expected to write, to do to write academic work or write whatever you want, and and that there is time set aside for that. And I think you know, it's a wonderful job.

Presenter33:31

Seventeen years after you left, it finally became possible to go back to Zanzibar. How did it feel to do so for the very first time?

Abdulrazak Gurnah33:39

Yeah, it was scary. First of all, the government had declared an amnesty to say people can return if they wish to, even if they left rather, you know, illegally. That was one thing. The other thing was that somebody rang me, a former school friend, as it were, to say, I've heard news that your father's very ill. And I thought, okay, it's okay to go back. I can't put this off anymore. But I didn't have the money. But as it happened, we were then living in Balaam, South London, and we're living in a maisonette, which was ropey, to say the least. And the roof was leaking. So we got the insurance people to come and have a look. And they said, yeah, okay, we'll pay you so much to have the leak repaired. I think it was £700, which was just enough for a ticket to go back to Zanzibar. So we stuffed some newspapers into that hole in the ceiling, and I went back. I wasn't coming back with gifts or something like that. I was coming back.

Speaker 233:48

You know

Presenter34:36

The victor returning with the spoils.

Abdulrazak Gurnah34:38

I'm coming back empty-handed, fearful. Do they still remember me? Yeah. Oh, will they be angry with me? Will I sound s different, a stranger?

Presenter34:41

Well

Presenter34:42

Yeah.

Abdulrazak Gurnah34:49

Like that. The guilt so far.

Presenter34:50

The

Abdulrazak Gurnah34:52

Somebody who's been away too long.

Presenter34:53

What was it like that stepping off the plane?

Abdulrazak Gurnah34:56

That was scary, but when I caught sight of my sisters and my aunt, my mother was actually not there,'cause I'd kept it quiet until the last minute before announcing that I was coming back. I didn't want somebody to say, Don't bother.

Presenter35:10

Really? You were worried you were worried about that?

Abdulrazak Gurnah35:11

But I could see as soon as they saw me and they were kind of jumping up and down, I thought, Yeah, he's gonna be all right.

Presenter35:19

It's time for some more music, Abdul Razak, your sixth choice today. What are we going to hear?

Abdulrazak Gurnah35:24

It's Kaira, Tomani Diabate. The first time I heard him play was in 1995. I'd vaguely heard about this instrument called the Kora. In 1995, there was this big festival about African culture and African art. So one of the concerts. And this man, whom I'd never heard of, called Tomani Diabate, comes on, a short man with a slight limp, and he sits himself down, you know, kind of cross-legged, this instrument which is bigger than him, because he's sitting down cross-legged there, and he starts to play. And it's like it's an orchestra. It's only one instrument. And only one man. It's like an ensemble playing. And I thought it was just fantastic.

Presenter36:40

Tsimani Djabate and Khaira.

Presenter36:43

Abdul Razak, when you were awarded the Nobel Prize, the judges said that it was for your uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents. How important is literature in opening up such big themes to the reading public?

Abdulrazak Gurnah37:03

Literature is important because of many things. It's important because it gives us pleasure, first of all. So despite that commendation, for which I'm very grateful, of course, but we read because we get pleasure out of it. And that pleasure is complicated. It's not a pleasure that says because it makes us smile or it makes us happy or something like that. It's pleasure like listening to music or something like that. It infuses us, you know, it touches us. And in addition to that, we learn because we perhaps are hearing things, new things that we didn't know before. And so we receive news of other places and other things. But we also see things that we already know. And again, that complicated experience of both learning new things and also having things that we know being indoors for us makes us understand how our humanity is shared with others, whether they're in Argentina, whether they're in South Africa or in Russia or whatever.

Speaker 237:29

Tough.

Abdulrazak Gurnah38:00

So the importance of it is not just about having things opened up for us, but actually having things confirmed for us, things that we already know, and things that perhaps we are grateful to hear that other people feel the same.

Presenter38:13

So Abdul Razak, I wonder what advice you would give to aspiring writers who might be listening to this today, and they're working to find their voices and navigate the literary world?

Abdulrazak Gurnah38:24

The advice I always give when people ask me for something like that is write, just right. There is no easy way, there is no advice that works.

Abdulrazak Gurnah38:36

in order for a person to find his or her way of writing. There isn't, I don't think, a way of teaching somebody that. I know there are creative writing courses, but they don't, I don't think, tell you this is what you should do. I imagine, I don't know, but I imagine that what they do is actually encourage you to find the way to do it that works for you. So the only way to find out is to write.

Presenter38:59

I loved your description of writing in English. You've described the language as a spacious and roomy house for you to occupy as a writer. So did it feel natural to you to write in English when you first began doing so?

Abdulrazak Gurnah39:11

Yes, it did. And I think this is one of the kind of little mysteries about writing, really. Writing. It isn't to do with fluency in a language, really. You can be as fluent, you can be born to it, or whatever, but it doesn't mean that you can write in it. And I'm not sure quite why or how that is so, but it is so. Maybe it's like music, that you can listen to music, but you can't produce music unless there's a certain kind of combination of qualities or something. Without me even thinking about the possibility of making writing something like a career or anything like that, I know that from a fairly early age, maybe nine or ten, that I could write in English quite easily when many of my classmates were still stumbling through it. So I don't think it was cleverness, I think it was just to do with that piece of luck, as it were, that I happened to have a facility in this. And that kind of continued.

Speaker 239:42

Good.

Abdulrazak Gurnah40:02

But I never thought it would that it would be something that I would do as a as as my life, as it were.

Presenter40:07

It's time for your next disc, your penultimate choice today, disc number seven. Who have we got next?

Abdulrazak Gurnah40:12

We got Miles Davies. I do really l love Miles Davis's work. But the very first time I heard him and my jazz education moved slowly, but it moved. There used to be a programme that John Peel and Bob Harris used to do late at night.

Presenter40:28

The old grey whistle tells me that.

Abdulrazak Gurnah40:29

The old grey whistle test, exactly. And they used to play some fantastic music. I think it used to be what, 11 o'clock? Yeah. Anyway, I heard that that LP, who played the whole thing, I think, Bitchesbrew, and I went and bought it the next day, which was a rather silly thing to do because there wasn't much money around in those days. The idea of going off and but ever since then I've been listening to Miles Davies. In fact, I think I've got everything that, as far as I know, that he has produced.

Presenter40:35

Hmm.

Presenter41:58

Miles Davis and So What and you just told me Abdul Razat Ghana that you used to listen to that every single day.

Abdulrazak Gurnah42:05

At night, yeah. Last thing at night. Play that and then um go to sleep if you can.

Presenter42:11

What a way to drift off. You talked about one of the pleasures of coming to Britain as being the books that you had access to and discovered. And obviously, you know, a significant chapter of your life is teaching and teaching about literature. I wonder about the academic work that you've done and whether that kind of invited you to appraise authors that you might not otherwise have appreciated or discovered.

Abdulrazak Gurnah42:36

When I became interested in seriously reading, as it were, before I even went to study literature, I was reading contemporary writing.

Abdulrazak Gurnah42:46

Particularly at that time, these wonderful writers, American Jewish writers, from Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Bernard Ballamoud, Philip Roth. So I really read a lot of American writing, as well as African American writing. James Baldwin was at work and discovered also slightly earlier period, the Harlem Renaissance, discovered a little bit about Caribbean writing and so on. So that's where I was. And of course African writing.

Speaker 343:06

Yeah.

Abdulrazak Gurnah43:12

Then when I was doing my PhD, I think, and I had time in the library, so every now and again when I got tired of what I was doing, I'd go wandering the stacks, as it were, and I just started reading. I think I read Jane Austen for the first time in that period, and I read all of her books, then I started reading Dickens, and I read all of Dickens, and I read Flaubert, then I read so I actually found that period of doing my PhD a time when I took a completely different direction from the direction that I was kind of initially interested in. It doesn't mean I lost interest in the other lot, but now I was educating myself. And that became the beginning of becoming an academic in a way, because an academic's career is not just about teaching the things that you're a specialist in, it's about teaching a great many other things. So you're constantly learning.

Presenter44:02

I know that you enjoy gardening when you're not working. I think you've said that writing is rather like gardening.

Abdulrazak Gurnah44:09

There is an aspect of it. I think of it. It's like making things like that. Out of nothing you make something. I think of carpentry possibly like that as well. So some of my figures, as you are in in the books that I write, there's always somebody who's making something, either a gardener or a carpenter or some I just think there's something really admirable about making things.

Speaker 344:15

Yeah.

Presenter44:32

Is that what writers do, though?

Abdulrazak Gurnah44:33

Yeah,'cause there's nothing there before you start, and you make it.

Presenter44:37

So it is useful after all.

Presenter44:39

Turns out

Presenter44:41

You did him a gardener after yourself in your book by the sea. You gave him your name.

Abdulrazak Gurnah44:46

That was a bit of naughtiness, wasn't it?

Presenter44:48

He snuck it in there.

Abdulrazak Gurnah44:50

But there to make the gardener Abdurazak was uh was, yeah, just a bit of naughtiness, to say that he's doing what writers do, which is to nurture plants and flowers.

Presenter45:01

Well, it's almost time to cast you away to our island, Abdul Razak. I think many people would conjure up, if you told them to imagine being stranded on a desert island, they might imagine a beach like one that you would see in Zanzibar, you know, with beautiful blue sea and palm trees, clear water, white sand, all of that. What kind of island are you imagining for yourself?

Abdulrazak Gurnah45:23

Yeah, pretty much like that, with a bit of shade though. Not uh so maybe trees growing pretty near the beach so you can lie in the shade and watch the sea pounding itself or pounding the land.

Presenter45:36

Would you set about cultivating your island, do you think?

Abdulrazak Gurnah45:38

If it's possible, yeah.

Abdulrazak Gurnah45:40

If it's if it's really a desert island, it might not be possible.

Presenter45:44

I suppose it depends on what definition of desert. It might just be deserted. I think the arcane interpretation is available to us.

Abdulrazak Gurnah45:48

That's it.

Abdulrazak Gurnah45:51

I I think that's probably what it means. It probably means deserted island, because if it's desert island you're pre pretty much not going to last very long.

Presenter45:59

Where's the fun in that?

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:00

Uh

Presenter46:00

What are these records even for? What about the challenges of the island? What would be the biggest for you, do you think? Survival? Isolation?

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:08

Yeah, I think possibly survival is always uh an issue, I suppose, until you learn how to cope. Isolation would be w something you can't fix. So I should think that's gonna be a uh an ongoing problem, how to keep yourself sane. And that's why you need all this music.

Presenter46:24

Mm.

Presenter46:27

What would you miss the most, do you think?

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:29

Company

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:30

Yeah.

Speaker 346:30

Yeah.

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:30

Uh

Presenter46:30

Yeah.

Presenter46:31

And are there any aspects of being cast away that you might quite look forward to?

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:35

Maybe silence?

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:38

Which is in fact the title of our next song.

Presenter46:41

Let's hear it, then tell me about it.

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:43

Full on

Abdulrazak Gurnah46:45

It's a beautiful song by Salif Keita, who is better known as I mean he became famous as somebody who does those disco, loud, powerful pounding songs. And this is so unlike his well, not entirely actually unlike, but it's it's a kind of a lesser strain in his work. But particularly this one, it actually means silence and it's a beautiful song.

Speaker 347:10

For long, I don't make it in there.

Speaker 347:16

For no cocoa to make it

Speaker 347:21

Follow by a cartel.

Presenter47:39

Salif Keita and Falong.

Presenter47:42

So, Abdul Razak Gurner, it's time to cast you away. I'm giving you the Koran, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take only one other book of your choice.

Presenter47:52

What's it gonna be?

Abdulrazak Gurnah47:53

This is a a dilemma.

Presenter47:54

I've been worried about this on your behalf.

Abdulrazak Gurnah47:56

Do we have

Abdulrazak Gurnah47:58

Because I knew all along that it's going to be a collection of short stories. Okay. Because a long book isn't going to do the job if you're there on your own. A little short story would do. But then I didn't I wasn't sure whether it would be a short story collection by one writer or a selection of stories. And these selections tend to be either by country, British short stories, American short stories, African short stories.

Presenter48:02

Okay.

Speaker 348:12

Stories and

Speaker 348:19

Yeah.

Abdulrazak Gurnah48:20

So it was a dilemma. Should I have the collected stories of Gene Rees, which was a candidate? Anyway, I came up with a collection of stories that David Miller edited. David Miller was a literary agent, and in fact he was my agent. Unfortunately, he passed away in his 50s. He did this collection called That Glimpse of Truth, a hundred of the best short stories ever written.

Abdulrazak Gurnah48:45

I think I'll take that.

Presenter48:46

That sounds like the perfect choice. You can also have a luxury item. What will that be?

Abdulrazak Gurnah48:51

A nail clipper.

Presenter48:52

Okay.

Abdulrazak Gurnah48:53

I hate nails that grow long.

Abdulrazak Gurnah48:55

So I would hate to be on this desert island without a nail clipper.

Presenter48:59

Oh, no, absolutely. You can definitely have one of those. I'll even make sure it's got the little file on it so you can keep the nice and smooth. No rough edges for you.

Abdulrazak Gurnah49:03

No sick.

Presenter49:06

And finally, which one track of the eight that we've heard today would you rush to save from the waves first?

Abdulrazak Gurnah49:13

Petit fleur.

Presenter49:14

Why?

Abdulrazak Gurnah49:15

Because it is just so beautiful. I love it. It tugs my heart every time I listen to it.

Presenter49:21

Abdul Razak Gurner, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Abdulrazak Gurnah49:26

Thank you very much for having me here.

Presenter49:41

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Abdul Razak and I hope he's happy on his island with his very tidy nails. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to. We've cast away many writers over the years including Com Tabine, Anne Enright, Zadie Smith and John Boyne. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Never Miserian, the executive production coordinator was Susie Roylands, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Sarah Taylor. The content editor was Mugabe Turia. Join me next time when my guest will be the comedian Romesh Ranganathan.

Speaker 250:30

This is Dr. Chris and Dr. Zand here and we are dropping in to let you know about our new BBC Radio 4 podcast.

Speaker 250:38

In What's Up Docs, we are going to be diving into the messy, complicated world of health and well-being because it can be confusing, can't it, Zahn? That's right, Chris. The mass of information out there can be contradictory, it can be overwhelming, and Chris and I get confused too. That's right, we get seduced by the marketing, the hype, the trends, so we want to be your guides through it. And I think it's fair to say, Zahn, we are going to be getting personal. We're absolutely going to be getting personal, Chris. What I want to do is bring in my own health dilemmas in the hope that we can help you with yours. Listen and subscribe to What's Up Docs on BBC Sounds.