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As President of the Oxford Literary Festival, Miles Young inducted Abdulrazak Gurnah, Nobel Laureate in Literature, into the Festival’s Honorary Fellowship. This fellowship recognises Professor Gurnah's outstanding contribution to Literature.  In his remarks the Warden said:

“The Swahili coast is a melting pot – or rather perhaps – an unmelting pot which provides inspiration for much of your work. It is a geography of considerable complexity which defies many contemporary labels, and which gives nuance and subtlety to your novels. Ignored by many, or misinterpreted, or distorted by Western tropes, it is a particular context from which you develop general lessons and insights for humankind in what has become the age of human displacement. You bring to life to those of us who are comfortably placed the traumas of relocation and the alienation which comes with it, a world where being a refugee does not mean that the whole of you finds refuge – where a lot of you is left behind.”

Interviewed by Mary Hockaday, the Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Professor Gurnah discussed his past work, but also particularly his latest novel, Thief.

Afterwards, Professor Gurnah and his wife were entertained to lunch in ������Ƶ.