Abdulrazak Gurnah
Tanzanian-born British writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (2021) (born 1948)
The numbers
2 + 7 = 9
Lo Shu grid
Missing: 3, 5, 6. Present digits repeat to show how many times they occur.
Life path 9 — The Humanitarian
Nine completes the cycle, and the tradition treats it as the number that has already been round once: broad, forgiving, oriented toward something larger than a single life. It is read as the number of the reformer and the artist. Its tension is the mirror of 6 — where 6 over-gives to the people in front of it, 9 is described as giving to humanity in general while the people in front of it wait.
Complete lines
Line of Reason
A complete line in the grid.
Line of Ambition
The 7-8-9 column complete. Read as drive that has both the wish and the machinery — the traditional marker of someone who converts intention into position.
Cooperation
A complete line in the grid.
Organisation
A complete line in the grid.
Repeated numbers
2 appears 3 times
Concentrated sensitivity. Read as perception so continuous it becomes hard to switch off.
What is missing
Missing 3
Read as difficulty getting the inner picture out — the thought is complete, the expression lags. Often described in people whose written voice is far stronger than their spoken one.
Missing 5
The centre of the grid, so its absence is weighted heavily. Read as difficulty adapting mid-course — a preference for the plan already chosen over the plan now indicated.
Missing 6
Read as a complicated relationship with obligation — either avoiding it or over-shouldering it, rarely a settled middle.
Vedic — Ank Jyotish
Moolank 2 comes from the day of the month alone; Bhagyank 9 from the whole date. They differ, which is the ordinary case — the two numbers answer different questions.
Chandra
The Moon. Mind, mood, reflection. Read as receptivity and changeability.
Bhagyank uses the same arithmetic as the Western life path, so the two will always agree. That is not two traditions confirming each other — it is one calculation under two names.
In their words
Our histories were partial, silent about many cruelties.
It was necessary to write of the persecutions and cruelties which the self-congratulations of our rulers sought to wipe from our memory.
I learned to have pleasure in reading simply because I love stories.
(How important is diversity in literature?) I suppose, in order to understand how other people live and what it is that motivates and energises and makes them happy and unhappy you have to know about other people. It's really quite as simple as that. You have to know. And the best way to know about other people is to hear what they have to say and not to be ventriliquising other people's lives and trying to explain people away. So in this respect writing from other places, or at least from other perspectives, which might be cultural, social, gender, is one of the most direct ways in which you can hear what other people are saying.
Literature performs different functions of course. Literature also engages us because we take pleasure in it, a kind of complicated pleasure. It depends what you read, of course. But I think at its best literature does that as well as it brings news, tells you things or maybe challenges simplifications that you've lived happily with, makes things more difficult for you in that respect. So I see all of those complicated functions. To learn, to enjoy and perhaps also to be challenged, although, that depends on the degree to which you are open to challenges. People can be very difficult in resisting challenges.
(For any aspiring writers, is there a particular piece of advice that you would give to them?) The best advice you can give a writer is just write. There is no simple way.
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