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October 8, 2021
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 | 2021 Nobel Prize in Litierature Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee." Based in Britain and writing in English, Gurnah, 72, joins Nigeria's Wole Soyinka as the only two non-white writers from sub-Saharan Africa ever to win what is widely seen as the world's most prestigious literary award. Gurnah left Africa as a refugee in the 1960s amid the persecution of citizens of Arab origin on the Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar, which would unite with the mainland territory Tanganyika to form Tanzania. He was able to return only in 1984, seeing his father shortly before his death. Though Swahili was his first language, English became Gurnah's literary tool when he began writing as a 21-year-old. He has drawn inspiration from Arabic and Persian poetry as well as the Koran, but the English-language tradition, from William Shakespeare to V. S. Naipaul, would especially mark his work. Check out these titles Photo credit: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images |
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 | Books on the Air An overview of talked-about books and authors. This weekly update, published every Friday, provides descriptions of recent TV and radio appearances by authors and their recently released books. See the hot titles from the media this week. |
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 | Miriam Toews Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books. She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for body of work. Toews is also a two-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Toews grew up in Steinbach, Manitoba, the second daughter of Mennonite parents. As a teenager, Toews rode horses and took part in provincial dressage and barrel-racing competitions and attended high school at the Steinbach Regional Secondary School. She left Steinbach at eighteen, living in Montreal and London before settling in Winnipeg. She has a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of Manitoba, and a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of King's College, Halifax. Check out her books here. |
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 | New Titles to Get Cozy With This Week Fall may be here, but October sure is coming in hot with these new books. Check them out here |
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| The home is the child's first school, the parent is the child's first teacher, and reading is the child's first subject.-Barbara Bush
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