Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Zanzibari-born 2021 Nobel Literature laureate’s grand homecoming was punctuated by the translation of his masterpiece, Paradise, into Kiswahili. His publisher, Mkuki Bgoya, speaks about its significance in the Swahili canon.
Before Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, Swahili lecturer and translator Dr Ida Hadjivayanis was already working on a Kiswahili translation of his novel, Paradise. A year after the award was announced, the translated text, Peponi, was published by Mkuki na Nyota.
Founded by pioneering Tanzanian publisher, Walter Bgoya in 1981, Mkuki na Nyota was a fitting choice not only because of its pivotal role in documenting Tanzanian, Southern African and, indeed, pan-African literary, political and intellectual history, but also because it has dedicated itself to carving out space for literary texts at a time when most publishers are pursuing the lucre of the school textbook market.
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