1 . One of the roles of the Nobel Prize for literature is to shine a light on someone who has been less visible than they deserve. That role was _______ this year in the announcement of Abdulrazak Gurnah as winner.

Unlike previous popular recipients living in Britain, he is not a _______. He could, as he said after the announcement, have reached more readers, but his publications _______ to grant him that. His publisher felt sorry for the fact that he “is one of the greatest living African writers; yet no one has ever _______ him,” but with this he did not agree: “I didn’t think I was ignored.”

There is a(n) _______ , here, that has to do with who is doing the looking, and what counts as officially being noticed. There is also a point of _______: calling Gurnah an African writer. In fact, while that seems to broaden horizons, it narrows and distances what he is doing. Gurnah was born in Zanzibar, and left for Britain when he was 18, _______ regional conflicts for what he hoped would be calmer waters, which turned out to be stronger dark current. He has lived in Britain ever since.

He began and stuck to writing to _______, to himself, of the shock -- of racism, rejection, poverty and loneliness. His ten novels return to it _______, which begins in 1996’s Admiring Silence. His work exists because of Britain as well as Zanzibar; it may ________ both or wholly neither. It arrives out of a(n) ________ of English literature (Gurnah is professor of literature at the University of Kent), and his first language, the rhythms and stories of Islam.

________, many of the UK's thirteen Nobel-winning writers were born elsewhere as by 2019, 14% of the UK’s population were born abroad. People might also be astonished at how many of those countries were once part of the British empire. Gurnah has spoken of how much of the world is still processing the wounds that colonialism ________, especially the experience of “losing your place in the world”-- where place is not just ________, but also belonging, status and culture.

In this sense, Gurnah’s work, which ________ those who might not have been remembered in history--shopkeeper, homemakers, students and refugees, could not be more British. But, more importantly, it could not be more universal.

2 . When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow. So at least he thought, and there was a certain amount of evidence to back him up. He had once been an actor—no, not quite, an extra—and he knew what acting should be. Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage: it is harder to find out how he feels. He came from the twenty-third floor down to the lobby on the mezzanine to collect his mail before breakfast, and he believed — he hoped — that he looked passably well: doing all right. It was a matter of sheer hope, because there was not much that he could add to his present effort. On the fourteenth floor he looked for his father to enter the elevator; they often met at this hour, on the way to breakfast. If he worried about his appearance it was mainly for his old father's sake. But there was no stop on the fourteenth, and the elevator sank and sank. Then the smooth door opened and the great dark-red uneven carpet that covered the lobby billowed toward Wilhelm's feet. In the foreground the lobby was dark, sleepy. French drapes like sails kept out the sun, but three high, narrow windows were open, and in the blue air Wilhelm saw a pigeon about to light on the great chain that supported the marquee of the movie house directly underneath the lobby. For one moment he heard the wings beating strongly.

Most of the guests at the Hotel Gloriana were past the age of retirement. Along Broadway in the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, a great part of New York's vast population of old men and women lives. Unless the weather is too cold or wet they fill the benches about the tiny railed parks and along the subway gratings from Verdi Square to Columbia University, they crowd the shops and cafeterias, the dime stores, the tearooms, the bakeries, the beauty parlors, the reading rooms and club rooms. Among these old people at the Gloriana, Wilhelm felt out of place. He was comparatively young, in his middle forties, large and blond, with big shoulders; his back was heavy and strong, if already a little stooped or thickened. After breakfast the old guests sat down on the green leather armchairs and sofas in the lobby and began to gossip and look into the papers: they had nothing to do but wait out the day. But Wilhelm was used to an active life and liked to go out energetically in the morning. And for several months, because he had no position, he had kept up his morale by rising early: he was shaved and in the lobby by eight o'clock. He bought the paper and some cigars and drank a Coca-Cola or two before he went in to breakfast with his father. After breakfast—out, out, out to attend to business. The getting out had in itself become the chief business. But he had realized that he could not keep this up much longer, and today he was afraid. He was aware that his routine was about to break up and he sensed that a huge trouble long presaged(预感)but till now formless was due. Before evening, he'd know.

Nevertheless he followed his daily course and crossed the lobby.

Rubin, the man at the newsstand, had poor eyes. They may not have been actually weak but they were poor in expression, with lacy lids that furled down at the corners. He dressed well. It didn't seem necessary—he was behind the counter most of the time—but he dressed very well. He had on a rich brown suit; the cuffs embarrassed the hairs on his small hands. He wore a Countess Mara painted necktie. As Wilhelm approached, Rubin did not see him; he was looking out dreamily at the Hotel Ansonia, which was visible from his corner, several blocks away. The Ansonia, the neighborhood's great landmark, was built by Stanford White. It looks like a baroque palace from Prague or Munich enlarged a hundred times, with towers, domes, huge swells and bubbles of metal gone green from exposure, iron fretwork and festoons. Black television antennae are densely planted on its round summits. Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tufa in sunlight. This morning it looked like the image of itself reflected in deep water, white and cumulous above, with cavernous distortions underneath. Together, the two men gazed at it.

Then Rubin said, “Your dad is in to breakfast already, the old gentleman.”

“Oh, yes？Ahead of me today？”

“That's a real knocked-out shirt you got on,” said Rubin.“Where’s it from, Saks？”

“No, it’s a Jack Fagman—Chicago.”

Even when his spirits were low, Wilhelm could still wrinkle his forehead in a pleasing way. Some of the slow, silent movements of his face were very attractive. He went back a step, as if to stand away from himself and get a better look at his shirt. His glance was comic, a comment upon his untidiness. He liked to wear good clothes, but once he had put it on each article appeared to go its own way. Wilhelm, laughing, panted a little; his teeth were small; his cheeks when he laughed and puffed grew round, and he looked much younger than his years. In the old days when he was a college freshman and wore a beanie(无檐小帽)on his large blonde head his father used to say that, big as he was, he could charm a bird out of a tree. Wilhelm had great charm still.

“I like this dove-gray color,” he said in his sociable, good-natured way. “It isn’t washable. You have to send it to the cleaner. It never smells as good as washed. But it’s a nice shirt. It cost sixteen, eighteen bucks.”

4 . Ireland and Lithuania have much in common. Both are small, Catholic, Europhile, enjoy a tricky relationship with a larger neighbour and have cuisines heavy on potatoes. Both also left it late when it came to homosexual rights. Homosexual acts were decriminalised only in 1993 in both countries. But since then, things have diverged. Merely living without fear would be an improvement: 84% of LGBT people in Lithuania are not comfortable revealing their identity.

Where an iron curtain once split Europe, a rainbow curtain now divides the continent. In western Europe, homosexual people enjoy a quality of life better than anywhere on the planet. They are free to marry and adopt children, and are protected from discrimination in all walks of life. Things in eastern Europe are not so good. In seven EU countries, including Poland, Hungary and Romania, less than half the population agree that homosexual people should have the same rights as straight ones. civil partnerships are not offered in six EU countries, all in central and eastern Europe. Poland has introduced “LGBTz-free zones”, a legally meaningless gimmick with the practical effect of declaring open season on gay people. Meanwhile, Hungary is working on a law that will ban gay couples from adopting. For gay people behind the Rainbow curtain—which covers about a quarter of the EU’s population—life can be grim.

Since family law is mainly up to member states, there is little the EU can do if a member state wants to stop a lesbian marrying or a homosexual couple adopting. Where Brussels can muscle in is when the right to free movement collides with bigoted domestic law. What happens if a gay couple and their child move to a country where such relationships are not recognised? The European Commission wants to smooth out these bumps, ensuring that the link between children and their gay parents is not severed if they move to a country where gay adoption is banned. While few are affected directly, such a move has potent symbolic power. Definitions of online hate speech will be widened to include homophobic abuse, too. Towns that introduced LGBT-free zones in Poland had EU funds cut. But the main thing the EU can offer is a pulpit, hammering those leaders who refuse to treat citizens equally.

Such banging of the drum for gay rights by Brussels does come with a risk. It is a fight both sides want to have. Normally, populists rely on caricatures when taking aim at Brussels. In this case there is less need. Populist politicians will claim that the EU is doing all it can to force countries to treat gay people better. EU officials will happily plead guilty. A common complaint is that eastern Europe is expected to go through decades of social change in the space of a few years. Change can happen quickly, though. Ireland enjoyed a social revolution in less than a generation, and Malta passed a slew of legislation that helped it become the most gay-friendly country in the EU in just a few years. There are few complaints about the pace of transformation in central and eastern Europe when it comes to living standards.

With the EU cowering (退缩) beneath a second wave of covid-19 cases and in the middle of its biggest-ever recession (经济衰退), a fight over gay rights could easily fall down the pecking order. It should not. The EU has made much of promoting “European values”. Usually, these tend to mean a respect for the rule of law, which is hardly inherently European. When it comes to gay rights, however, Europe has genuinely been a pioneer. Until a gay person in Vilnius or Budapest has the same rights as one in Dublin or Madrid, European values are no such thing at all.

5 . Once, Mama had read about geraniums in a magazine -- versatile, pretty, easy to grow - and, she became possessed with a vision of a house flooded with flowers. The notion inspired her into motion. She spent a small fortune on elegant plant stands, imported flowerpots and armies of fully grown geraniums. She could be like that: my mother always had sudden sprints of creativity.

She also asked for my help, and we squatted in the backyard together, arranging roots in their elegant containers. Mama wore long gardening gloves over her manicured hands, and her finger pressed soil into place with fastidiousness and even passion. She had bought me gloves too, but I refused to wear them.

“You’ll get so dirty, Perla.”

“I want to get dirty.”

“Ay, Perla,” she said, shaking her head. She said no more but beamed with irritation. My refusal disturbed the plan for how the geranium days should go, mother and daughter tending flowers and don’t they look picture perfect in their matching gloves? For half an hour she would not talk to me, but then she thawed, so absorbed in her project that she forgot my fault, or perhaps for fear that I might abandon the project altogether.

She needn’t have worried. I didn’t want to leave. It was a rare chance to spend time with my mother. I could scent her perfume and feel breaths without having to find anything to say. We often struggle to communicate with each other, beyond the essential good morning and good night, as though we were strangers or beginners of a language. I wanted to learn my mother’s language, if only to better understand her and to increase the chances of her understanding me. There is so much I longed to tell her as I squatted beside her, but I also feared that, If I started, other matters might leap out that were not meant to be spoken. Better not to risk the opening. Better not to attempt too much speech with my mother.

When all the flowers were ready in their pots, mama spent another day distributing them through the house. There were more flowers than any other house in our Buenos Aires -- so that when you entered, you felt as though you’re swimming through petals.