The Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize for literature to novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was born on the East African islands of Zanzibar. They said they chose Gurnah for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism.” Bashir Abu-Manneh, a lecturer in postcolonial literature at the University of London, used to teach with Gurnah. He tells The World’s Marco Werman that the beauty of Gurnah’s intimate and emotional writing is that he is able to capture the impact of historical changes and migration through a single person’s experience.