Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation with Elif Shafak

Grab a front row seat to an extraordinary conversation between two literary greats: Nobel Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah and award-winning writer Elif Shafak.

The pair talk about their writing, the role of literature in presenting diverse perspectives, and the power of storytelling to bring hope in times of crisis and in a deeply polarised and fractured world.

Gurnah is the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his latest novel is Theft, in which he explores the intertwined lives of three young people – Karim, Gauzia and Badar – as they come of age in postcolonial East Africa. Gurnah has previously been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orwell Prize for Fiction, among others, and was professor of English at the University of Kent.

Shafak is a British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into 56 languages. Her latest novel There are Rivers in the Sky is set across multiple timelines and locations, and follows a group of people who are connected by a single drop of water. Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and her book 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.