Two weeks ago, the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was born in Zanzibar, an archipelago off the coast of Tanzinia. Gurnah is the author of 10 novels and numerous short stories and essays, all of which he wrote in English with accompanying elements of Swahili, Gurnah’s native language.
When I was reading about Gurnah’s award on NPR, I came across a quote from Alan Cheuse, from a review of Gurnah’s Booker Prize short-listed novel Paradise. Alan wrote, "No Heart of Darkness in these pages. Gurnah gives us a more realistic mix of light and dark, of beautiful forests, dangerous vines and snakes, and a patchwork of warring fiefdoms and wily traders right out of the Middle Ages."
When Gurnah was 18, he fled his native Zanzibar for Britain following the Zanzibar Revolution, and he has lived and worked in his adopted country ever since. Gurnah’s selection as Nobel Laurette marks the first time a Black writer has won the award since Toni Morrison received the Nobel in 1993.
Much has been made of this fact and the historic whiteness of past Nobel recipients. When considering the reasons behind these disparities, Gurnah himself has remarked on the lack of translations many writers across the world face. During an interview with CNN, Gurnah said: “The Swedish Academy read what they can….So if they can’t read in Swahili, they can’t very well give it to someone who’s written in Swahili.”
In April, we welcomed the Ethiopian writer Bewketu Seyoum to the Cheuse Center as part of a year-long residency. Bewketu is one of Ethiopia’s most respected and famous writers. Whenever we correspond with Ethiopian journalists, intellectuals or policy makers about Bewketu, they fawn over the skill of Bewketu’s writing and the importance of the work he is producing. He is an important voice for millions of Ethiopians.
Yet Bewketu is not well known here in the United States. This is because he writes in Amharic, a language that is woefully under-translated in English. During his residency at the Cheuse Center, we are working to translate more of Bewketu’s work into English, a quest that has cut to the heart of some of the thornier issues of translation: What languages get translated into English, who is doing the translating, and what writers ultimately find a wider audience?
Translation is not an easy art; literary translators work indefatigably with little compensation or acknowledgement for their work. And there is a real advantage when writers from another country write in English, as Abdulrazak Gurnah himself does. Yet, as Gurnah’s selection as Nobel Laureate has, in part, revealed, access to the linguistic diversity of world literature and the writers who create it is still woefully inadequate.
This is why the Cheuse Center has always championed the work of literary translators and works in translation. From our Day of Translation to our podcast Globally Lit, we see part of our mission as providing a public space for writers and languages not prioritized by mainstream American publishing.
We hope that by the time Bewketu leaves the Cheuse Center next spring, we will have helped him and his work shrink that accessibility gap. If you would like to support us in this endeavor — whether through a donation, contacts or thoughts — I encourage you to get in touch with me in the weeks ahead.
October 20, 2021
