Stefan Helgesson led discussions during symposium in South Africa
Stefan Helgesson, Professor of English at Stockholm University, led a conversation between Nobel laureates J. M. Coetzee and Abdulrazak Gurnah last night, during the ongoing Nobel Symposium in Literature at STIAS in South Africa.
Stefan Helgesson, Professor of English at Stockholm University, led a conversation between Nobel laureates J. M. Coetzee and Abdulrazak Gurnah last night.
This year’s Nobel Symposium takes place between 3 and 7 November at STIAS (Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study) in South Africa and focuses on how African writing contributes to reformulating destructive narratives from the past and from our time.
It was a successful event with an audience of up to 500 people in Endler Hall in Stellenbosch. Coetzee and Gurnah each gave a short lecture on the theme “Africa writes the world”, and then the conversation took place, which revolved around literary prizes, the possibilities of literature to challenge power structures, the reading that had shaped the two authors in their youth, and the possibilities of multilingualism and translation to circumvent the dominance of the English language in the world.
The symposium, which is by invitation only, brings together around 40 of the world's leading scholars and writers in the field of African writing, with lectures, discussions and an outreach program.
