'One of the world's most prominent postcolonial writers . He has consistently and with great compassion penetrated the effects of colonialism and its effects on the lives of uprooted and migrating individuals' Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee Delivered in London on 7 December 2021, 'Writing' is the lecture of the Nobel Laureate in Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah. Collected here with three further essays, it explores his coming-of-age, his early experiences in 1960s Britain, the narratives of oceans, his lifelong love affair with reading, and the power of writing to subvert the stories that have been handed to us.