It is in the familial space with its dramas of loves, betrayals, desires and dreams that excels. “In a novel that spans the breadth of Zambia’s precolonial past to its digital future, Serpell’s unbound imagination is often a thing of beauty. A striking debut.” - USA Today (5 Books Not to Miss) “A rich, thick Zambian epic, The Old Drift blends real-life history with magical realism. “A story that intertwines strangers into families, which we'll follow for a century, magic into everyday moments, and the story of a nation, Zambia.” -NPR though in its sprawling size, its flavor of picaresque comedy and its fusion of family lore with national politics it more resembles Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.” -The Wall Street Journal

“A founding epic in the vein of Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a dazzling book, as ambitious as any first novel published this decade.” -Dwight Garner, The New York Times Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.As the generations pass, their lives-their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes-emerge through a panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction.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 is a testament to our yearning to create and cross borders, and a meditation on the slow, grand passage of time.įinalist for the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize 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. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. The Windham-Campbell Prizes for Fictionġ904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M.The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction.The Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Dwight Garner, The New York Times “A dazzling debut, establishing Namwali Serpell as a writer on the world stage.”-Salman Rushdie, The New York Times Book Review

The old drift book