Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday.

He was awarded “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”, said the Nobel award committee in a statement.

The prize is a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (approximately Rs 8.5 crore).

Born in 1948, on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, the writer had arrived in England as a refugee in the end of the 1960s. He has 10 novels and a number of short stories to his credit.

“The theme of the refugee’s disruption runs throughout his work,” said the Nobel committee.

The chairperson of the Nobel Committee for Literature, Anders Olsson, described him as one of the world’s most well-known post-colonial writers, reported AP.

“Gurnah has consistently and with great compassion, penetrated the effects of colonialism in East Africa and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals,” Olsson said at a news conference, according to The New York Times.

The announcement came a day after German scientist Benjamin List and British scientist David WC MacMillan were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing “asymmetric organocatalysis” – a tool to build molecules.

Earlier this week, American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian were given the Nobel Prize for medicine for their discovery of receptors that allow humans to feel temperature and touch.

On Tuesday, scientists Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi received the Nobel Prize for physics for their contribution to complex systems to study climate science.

In 2020, the Nobel Prize for Literature went to American poet Louise Glück.