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 and the launch of a thrilling new talent
NAMWALI SERPELL is a Zambian writer who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award for women writers in 2011 and was selected for the Africa 39, a 2014 Hay Festival project to identify the best African writers under 40. Her first published story, 'Muzungu', was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009 and shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize for African writing. She won the 2015 Caine Prize for her story 'The Sack'. The Old Drift is her first novel.
Extraordinary, ambitious, evocative... The Old Drift
is an impressive book, ranging skillfully between historical and
science fiction, shifting gears between political argument,
psychological realism and rich fabulism...a dazzling debut,
establishing Namwali Serpell as a writer on the world stage --
Salman Rushdie * New York Times Book Review *
Brilliant...there are moments of such heart-wrenching poignancy
that I had to put the book down several times and recompose
myself. Serpell writes with the emotional maturity and sardonic
smile of one who has lived several times already -- Leaf Arbuthnot
* Sunday Times *
An intimate, brainy, gleaming epic... The reader who picks up
The Old Drift is likely to be more than simply impressed.
This is a dazzling book, as ambitious as any first novel
published this decade. It made the skin on the back of my neck
prickle...she's such a generous writer. The people and the
ideas in The Old Drift, like dervishes, are set whirling --
Dwight Garner * New York Times *
From the poetry and subtle humor constantly alive in its language,
to the cast of fulsome characters that defy simple categorization,
The Old Drift is a novel that satisfies on all levels. Namwali
Serpell excels in creating portraits of resilience-each unique and
often heartbreaking. In The Old Drift the individual
struggle is cast against a world of shifting principles and
politics, and Serpell captures the quicksand nature of a
nation's roiling change with exacting precision. My only regret is
that once begun, I reached the end all too soon -- Alice
Sebold
An impressive first novel... The Old Drift is
electric with the sense that Serpell is laying down pieces in a
puzzle kept teasingly out of sight... A growing sense that
The Old Drift could go on for ever is tribute to its
inventiveness -- Anthony Cummins * Observer *
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