PUBLISHING BOOKS
The Nobel Prize for Literature 2021
Among today ’ s finest novelists : Abdulrazak Gurnah
ALEXANDRA PRINGLE
Important literature such as Abdulrazak Gurnah ’ s , stories about seismic events that uproot people and send them across oceans , will eventually find the acclaim they deserve
This article was originally published The Hindu on 16 October 2021 .
In 2000 , the beginning of a new century , I arrived at Bloomsbury Publishing as editor-in-chief . The first thing I did was hire an assistant , a young woman called Chiki Sarkar , and with her help began the enterprise of building a list . My ambition was to find stories from all corners of the world that convey the complexity of history and human experience using the richness of the English language , a language that has been made and remade over centuries in different countries by different cultures .
One of the first manuscripts I received came to me from the great literary agent , Deborah Rogers . It was a novel called By the Sea . The author was the Zanzibar-born Abdulrazak Gurnah . It was a haunting story of colonialism and its aftermath , of asylum , friendship and betrayal . In 1967 , the teenage Gurnah had fled Zanzibar , escaping the barbarities of the state , an experience which informed his writing life . By the Sea was his sixth novel ; his fourth , Paradise , had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize .
I was delighted to get the chance to become Gurnah ’ s publisher ; I had long admired his writing and this beautiful new novel was exactly what I wanted for my list .
Abdulrazak Gurnah and Alexander Pinghe . Photo Bloomsbury India
We published By the Sea the following year . It received great critical acclaim , and together with another novel I published , The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri , was longlisted for the Booker Prize . Neither made it to the shortlist , but that is the way of publishing — heartbreaks are part of a publisher ’ s daily life .
The wait
Gurnah takes his time to write each of his books . He was for many years professor of English and postcolonial literature at Kent University and had to fit writing around his professional duties . The five novels I ’ ve published came in five-year gaps : Desertion , The Last Gift , Gravel Heart and , last year , Afterlives .
Publishing what we call ‘ literary fiction ’ is not easy , and the subtler and more nuanced the work , the harder it is . Editors have to be able to live with disappointment and at the same time be the most optimistic people alive . I found it increasingly difficult to produce the sales I believed Gurnah should have . However , I believed that important
Abdulrazak Gurnah ’ s titles published by Bloomsbury . Photo Bloomsbury India
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Indian Printer & Publisher | 1 November 2021