Nobel Prize winner in Literature and British writer Abdul Razak Gulna continued the literary activities of this trip to China in Beijing.
On March 11, Gurna had a conversation with another Nobel Prize winner and famous writer Mo Yan at Beijing Normal University, with the theme of "Hometown and Foreign Country of Literature".
Northeastern Gaomi Township in Mo Yan's novels and Zanzibar, the East African island in Gurner's novels, both contain infinite nostalgia for their hometown and extend their deep thinking about the world. In the fluid twentieth century, changes in identity are their literary themes.
In his speech, Mo Yan mentioned that literature will never die with the advancement of science and technology, and AI will not make himself and Gurna "unemployed" because the writer's unique image thinking can never be replaced by AI. He believes that literary creative thinking needs to find irreplaceable resources from the nation’s tradition. On the basis of inheriting and carrying forward the nation’s literary tradition, it has extensive exposure to the common emotional experiences and realistic pursuits of mankind, so that literature can truly go global.
Gurna said that his hometown Zanzibar has a large beach. In a sense, the beach is connecting with the world and conducting cross-oceanic exchanges with other cultures in the world. Home and hometown are not only a geographical concept, but also an emotional resonance deep in the heart.
On the evening of 12th, Gurna was a guest on Dong Yuhui’s Douyin live broadcast room “Walking with Hui” and talked about “telling a story to people who have left home”. During the approximately one-and-a-half-hour live broadcast, a total of 19,000 units of the first volume (five types) of Gurna's works were sold in the live broadcast room. About 600,000 netizens entered the live broadcast room to watch.
The theme of Dong Yuhui's interview with Gurna is about the feelings and experiences of leaving home and finding oneself. When answering Dong Yuhui's question "How does education change you?", Gurna said that when he left Zanzibar to receive higher education in the UK, his family asked him to learn some useful knowledge. Useful here refers to being useful to the country and society, usually being a doctor, lawyer or engineer after graduation. Gurna was living in England while looking for something useful to him, and finally chose literature.
He believes that writing helps to understand and analyze things. For example, it can help one better understand the situation in a foreign country and the relationship with others.
When Dong Yuhui asked Gurna to share his experience as a teacher for many years, Gurna said that there were not many jobs that allowed him time to write after work, which was one of the reasons why he was satisfied with being a teacher. Talking about literature with students and guiding students in writing are also a happy thing for him.
Today's life has become more fluid, and many people feel uncomfortable as a result. Gurna mentioned that large-scale migration is a global phenomenon, but migration is also ancient for humans. The function of literature is that you can have a better understanding of your own situation through other people's stories.
Gurna also made suggestions for readers who have time to buy books but don’t have time to read. He said, don’t panic just because you have a lot of books to read. There will always be time for reading. But each book should be given corresponding attention. You cannot read a book for 10 pages and then put it aside and forget about it.
Before the interview ended, Dong Yuhui presented Gurna with the Chinese and English versions of "Three Hundred Tang Poems" and the English translation of Chi Zijian's novel "The Right Bank of the Ergun River".
