Nobel laureate Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah, QU President Dr. Hassan Al Derham and others during a QU Press discussion with QU and Doha Institute officials.
The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021, Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah, says translation is essential in disseminating literary works and knowledge.
The Tanzanian-born author was awarded the prestigious Nobel honour for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,” the Nobel Prize organisers stated.
During a webinar organised by Qatar University Press, Gurnah said, “People have passed knowledge through writing over the centuries, and this is what writing can do. On the other hand, translations are an important part of disseminating literature. It is how cultures and civilisations connect. I know that a lot of people in the Arab world and the Gulf are interested in pursuing this idea (translation) and are putting a lot of effort in translating not just books, but also knowledge-inducing materials.”
“I write books, and then the publishers sell. A few Arabic publishers reached out to me after the Nobel announcement, and some Arabic translations of my books are coming out in March,” he added.
Commenting on the business of publishing, Gurnah said publishers have different styles and reasons to make a body of work commercial. He stressed that academic publications project more quality and standards of the materials being published, citing examples like QU Press, Cambridge, and Oxford Presses.
Meanwhile, he noted that some are driven by commercial concerns through fiction. At the same time, literature-fiction publishers are more concerned with writing and literature, and the author’s status is not a benchmark for publication.
“Of course, there are international conglomerates that own the major publishing houses. While they are conglomerates, they are also public companies which means they operate as a commercial unit. However, they also know they have a role to play in culture. Publishers know they are building for a cultural future that will provide them with prestige but also with money.”
Gurnah also stressed that Arab and African authors have to stand for their works and tell their stories, notwithstanding restrictions on their writing.
“These days, you have someone from other parts of the world who wants to speak about the issues of Africa, but someone else might ask what rights they have to do that? Do we want to keep ourselves in dialogue with people who have narrow-minded positions, or do we say we know we have people who want to shut people up for whatever reason? But I am not going to let anyone shut me up.”
Gurnah, who has written books like Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, By the Sea, The Last Gift, and more recently Afterlives, while responding to a question about belonging and identity, stressed the human capacity to adapt to circumstances.
“In all my books, I try to think about ideas like belonging. But I admire people who are displaced and make new lives — people who don’t have to be refugees the way the word is used nowadays. I do admire the capacity that human beings have to retrieve something from the most horrible circumstances,” he said.
QU President Dr. Hassan Al Derham participated in the webinar, while Dr. Talal Al Emadi, QU Press Founding Director, and Prof Abdelwahab El Affendi, President of Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and QU Press board member moderated the dialogue.
