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When Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in literature last year, not nearly enough people had read anything by the Tanzanian-born writer. The author of 10 English-language novels, Gurnah had attracted critical praise, but fans knew his stories of East Africa and exile should be reaching a wider audience. In response to the Nobel Prize news, Gurnah’s British editor confessed, “It has been one of the great sadnesses and frustrations of my career that his work has not received the recognition it deserves. . . . I had almost given up hope.��

That hope was well placed. Propelled by the worldwide recognition that the Swedish Academy conferred, Gurnah’s books are finally being reprinted in America, and his latest, “Afterlives,�� is being released by Riverhead, the savviest U.S. publisher of literary fiction. Consider this a late invitation you should not ignore.

Now 73, Gurnah fled to England as a teenage refugee after the 1964 uprising in Zanzibar. He began writing fiction in English �� his first language was Swahili �� and eventually became an English professor at the University of Kent, where he taught for several decades. Throughout his career, he has worked to impress upon a forgetful world the experiences of people displaced and rendered invisible. . . .

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