“National narratives tell you what you must not say.”

In this episode, Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah joins HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews.

Gurnah challenges history from a European perspective. To him, the idea of European centers is not just an oversight, but a kind of blindness.

His work, novels with interwoven histories based on complex and surprising historical narratives, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. The Swedish Academy cited his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee."

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Links & Resources:

• Read the transcript of this interview on HEIST online.
• Returning Germany's Stolen Skulls - a BBC radio documentary by Peter and Ben
• Dig Where You Stand - a podcast by Peter and Ben about ancestral remains in Berlin museums
• Abdulrazak Gurnah's info at the Nobel Prize website
• Keep up with HEIST on Instagram: @heistberlin_.
• Support worker-owned Berlin journalism and subscribe to HEIST.