In Gravel Heart, "pain" is used 31 times, and 53 times in Afterlives, his most recent book, published in 2020.

For Gurnah, the pain — of memories and the mistakes one has made — becomes an intense feeling, rather than something like an ache in the back, as a reflection of age.

"It's a natural thing that the more time passes, the more memories accumulate and the more painful it is to live with them," he says.

Yet, the calm, delicacy and accuracy of his portrayal of individuals stuck between the cracks of different cultures — and clear conveyance of complexity that leaves no room for ambiguity — impresses writers such as Ge Fei, Sun Ganlu and Huang Yuning.

According to Gurnah, writers need to be more honest about themselves and their characters to talk about these experiences in order to be original.

Connections found

As an unexpected winner — Gurnah himself believes as much — it wasn't until he won Nobel recognition that Chinese readers and publishers, like many of their foreign counterparts, got to learn about him.

According to Huang, who is also deputy editor-in-chief of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, her company managed to get the copyright for all of Gurnah's work shortly after the Nobel announcement. They published Chinese editions of five of his novels — The Last Gift, Paradise, Afterlives, By the Sea and Admiring Silence — within 10 months.

His other five novels were published in Chinese last July.

Gurnah is about to publish a new book next year and Huang's publishing house has already taken on its translation.

Nevertheless, it's not hard to discover the many connections between the writer and Chinese readers.