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Abdulrazak Gurnah delivers his Nobel lecture; the best longreads of the year

Abdulrazak Gurnah. Photo: © Mark Pringle.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, has given his Nobel lecture. The Tanzanian-born novelist stressed that “writing cannot be just about battling and polemics, however invigorating and comforting that can be.”

Jon Caramanica considers the work of the late critic and musician Greg Tate, calling him “ a singular voice, a fount of bravura essays on the fantastical creativity, determined resilience and wry paradoxes of Black creativity and life. His writing froze and shattered time, supercharged neurons, unraveled familiar knots and tied up beautiful new ones.”

The Wirecutter Union is filing a charge of unfair labor practices against the New York Times because the company allegedly withheld holiday pay when the union was on strike. The union tweeted, "While on strike, we fully expected to have our non-holiday pay docked (and it was). But it is illegal to withhold pay for taking a paid holiday. This is clear retaliation for engaging in a protected concerted labor activity."

Longreads has released its list of the best of reported essays of 2021. The winners include Tobi Haslett’s “Magic Actions” from n+1, Breai Mason-Campbell’s “Seeing in the Dark” from Pipe Wrench, Lisa Wells’s “To Be a Field of Poppies,” from Harper’s Magazine, and more.

At Columbia Journalism Review, Anya Schiffrin looks at the regulations against online disinformation that the European Union is expected to announce next year. Schiffrin writes that the new bills “have the potential to become global standard setters largely because they will be the first comprehensive regulations to be passed by democratic governments.”

The White Review has released its best books of the year list.