Indeed, reviews of The Old Drift are replete with adjectives like epic, masterpiece, grand, astounding, powerful, and more-and I don’t dispute these, insofar as they point to one kind of aesthetic, affective, or artistic experience of the novel. It is, as more than one critic put it and as Serpell herself has joked, an attempt to write the Great Zambian Novel and its size (at more than five hundred pages), allusions to the Western (and non-Western) literary tradition, endless play with language, incorporation of historical and contemporary texts, commentary on changing national-political landscapes, blending of real and fictional histories and biographies, attention to sexual and racial politics, and critiques of capitalism and colonialism attest to its likely achievement of this status. ( From the publisher.Namwali Serpell’s 2019 novel The Old Drift is the sweeping, multigenerational saga of three families whose personal histories converge over the course of more than a century on the shores of the Zambezi river, and in the eventual shadow of the Kariba Dam, from the dawn of the twentieth century to 2024. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.Īs the generations pass, their lives-their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes-form a symphony about what it means to be human.įrom a woman covered with hair and another plagued with endless tears, to forbidden love affairs and fiery political ones, to homegrown technological marvels like Afronauts, microdrones and viral vaccines-this gripping, unforgettable novel sweeps over the years and the globe, subverting expectations along the way.Įxploding with color and energy, The Old Drift is a testament to our yearning to create and cross borders, and a meditation on the slow, grand passage of time. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. The tale? A playful panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction.
Here begins the epic story of a small African nation, told by a mysterious swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. An electrifying debut from the winner of the 2015 Caine Prize for African writing, The Old Drift is the Great Zambian Novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.
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