Nobel laureate Prof Abdulrazak Gurnah received an honorary doctorate from Stellenbosch University (SU) on Monday (23 March 2026) at the institution’s March graduation. Gurnah, who is an internationally acclaimed writer and literary scholar, was awarded the degree Doctor of Literature (DLitt), honoris causa, at a ceremony for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Gurnah was honoured for his thoughtful and moving exploration of displacement and identity; for giving voice to the experiences of exile and migration through his writing; and for enriching world literature with stories that connect cultures and reveal our shared humanity.

In his acceptance speech, Gurnah said that while it’s an honour for him to be celebrated by SU in this way, it’s also pleasant to be with the new graduates. “For you, it's the end of something, in some respects, the completion of something, but it's also the beginning of something.”

He emphasised the role of the humanities in helping us navigate the difficult times we’re living in. 

“We seem to be doing it all the time, living through difficult times, and each time, it seems more impossible than the last, but you're students and scholars of the humanities, which is a study of in a sense of how we are as human beings, and how we know things and how we deal with things. It is a discipline that aspires, more than anything else, to understand how we are and how we live together.

“I hope you will be able to make a contribution to this that you will be proud of.”

More about Gurnah

Prof Abdulrazak Gurnah received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021. 

Gurnah was born in Zanzibar in 1948. He left for England in 1967 to pursue his education. He was Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures until his retirement in 2017.

Drawing from personal experiences, his body of work has shaped the understanding of migration, disruption, and memory. His first novel, Memory of Departure, was published in 1987. He went on to publish another ten novels, numerous short stories, essays, edited volumes, and scholarly articles. 

When awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy praised Gurnah for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.

Gurnah has a longstanding relationship with Stellenbosch University. He has been a keynote speaker at several conferences hosted by the Department of English, and his novels have also long been on the reading lists for undergraduate and postgraduate students. He is also a Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) Fellow and was in residence at STIAS in 2018 when he was working on his novel Afterlives. He recently served on the scientific committee for the Nobel in Africa Symposium in Literature, “Retrieving Pasts, Imagining Futures: Creative Forms in African Writing”, that was held at STIAS in November 2025.