4 h. ago Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah review – love and betrayal from the Nobel laureate

This is a powerful story of debt and obligation set against the tourism boom in post-colonial TanzaniaA storyteller of understated brilliance, Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel prize in literature for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. Born in Zanzibar, Gurnah, now 76, moved to Britain in 1968 as a refugee of the Zanzibar revolution. His books often feature people who leave what they know and arrive “in strange places, carrying little bits of jumbled luggage and suppressing secret and garbled ambitions”, to use the words of a character from his 2001 novel By the Sea. Theft, Gurnah’s first book since his Nobel win, is in part a continued inquiry into familiar themes of exile and memory, home, longing and loneliness. It is also a poignant portrait of love, friendship and betrayal, set against Tanzania’s tourism boom during the 1990s.The novel follows Karim,...

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23 h. ago Duterte’s arrest gives ‘a sense impunity ends’, says Nobel peace prize winner

Maria Ressa said rules-based order ‘can perhaps still exist’ but social media is being used to undermine democracy around the worldThe arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is a welcome sign that the rules-based order continues to hold, the Nobel laureate Maria Ressa has said, even as the global order has been marred by the US “descending into hell” at the hands of the same forces that consumed the Philippines.Ressa’s remarks came after Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, made his first appearance before the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, accused of committing crimes against humanity during his brutal “war on drugs”. Continue reading...

Events

30 h. ago Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah review – a masterclass in quicksilver storytelling

The Nobel laureate’s wonderful new novel connects a trio of east African teens as they come of age, moving from small-scale dramas to wide-ranging social panoramasThe receipt of a big award inevitably ramps up the pressure on whatever the winner publishes next, but there can be no such fears over Abdulrazak Gurnah’s new novel, Theft, his first since becoming a Nobel laureate in 2021. Set between his birthplace, Zanzibar, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, it’s a quietly powerful demonstration of storytelling mastery, at once coming-of-age chamber piece and wide-angled postcolonial panorama, pegged to the inner lives of its central trio – all teenagers followed into adulthood. Meanwhile, sketched between the lines, is family heartache spread over several generations, all narrated in a quicksilver style that gives you the pleasurable sense that you’re putty in the hands of a warm yet clear-eyed authorial intelligence.It begins by tracing the marital misery that led to one of its characters,...

Politics

2 w. ago Tariffs can help US workers. But Trump’s doing them all wrong

Trump’s levies won’t bring factories home. But combined with infrastructure investment, protectionism can be a progressive boonIn the run-up to the 2024 election, a lot of people were ringing alarms about Donald Trump’s tariffs. Kamala Harris called Trump’s policies a “tax on the American people” and warned of sky-high prices. According to the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, they are “very bad for America and for the world”. His fellow Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called them “small, ugly, and stupid” (seemingly unaware that he was invoking that joke in Annie Hall about the food being bad and the portions too small). More recently, the whirlwind tariff drama of the past two months – first a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada, then a 30-day “pause” on that policy, a plan to raise tariffs on steel, aluminum and agricultural goods, plus an across the board tariff hike on China – has generated yet more frenzied debate about the danger of tariffs.Observers aren’t wrong to crit...

Politics

2 w. ago Tariffs can help US workers. But Trump’s doing them all wrong | Dustin Guastella

Trump’s levies won’t bring factories home. But combined with infrastructure investment, protectionism can be a progressive boonIn the run-up to the 2024 election, a lot of people were ringing alarms about Donald Trump’s tariffs. Kamala Harris called Trump’s policies a “tax on the American people” and warned of sky-high prices. According to the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, they are “very bad for America and for the world”. His fellow Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called them “small, ugly, and stupid”. More recently, the whirlwind tariff drama of the past two months – first a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada, then a 30-day “pause” on that policy, a plan to raise tariffs on steel, aluminum and agricultural goods, plus an across the board tariff hike on China – has generated yet more frenzied debate about the danger of tariffs.Observers aren’t wrong to criticize the US president’s policies. His proposed tariffs seem unlikely to improve what ails the US economy. Worse, app...

Politics

3 w. ago Dozens of Nobel laureates urge Trump to help release Belarusian political prisoners

Around 1,400 political prisoners – including doctors, journalists and scientists – are jailed in the country, according to human rights groups

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