The Old Drift

A Novel

By: Namwali Serpell

Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Richard E. Grant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

"A dazzling debut, establishing Namwali Serpell as a writer on the world stage." (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times Book Review)

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by:

• Dwight Garner, The New York Times
• The New York Times Book Review
• Time
• NPR
• The Atlantic
• BuzzFeed
• Tordotcom
• Kirkus Reviews
• BookPage

Winner of:

• The Arthur C. Clarke Award
• The Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award
• The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction
• The Windham-Campbell Prizes for Fiction

The year 1904. 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. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. 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. As the generations pass, their lives - their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes - emerge through a panorama of history, fairy tale, romance, and science fiction.

From 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.

Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

"An intimate, brainy, gleaming epic.... This is a dazzling book, as ambitious as any first novel published this decade." (Dwight Garner, The New York Times)

"A founding epic in the vein of Virgil’s Aeneid...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 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)

©2019 Namwali Serpell (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"A rich, thick Zambian epic, The Old Drift blends real-life history with magical realism.... A striking debut." (USA Today 5 Books Not to Miss)

"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.... It is in the familial space with its dramas of loves, betrayals, desires and dreams that [Serpell] excels. Her Zambian characters are especially brimming and compelling. In a nod to Leo Tolstoy, she eventually offers her readers a lovely kernel of an overarching theme that binds her characters across the passage of time and encapsulates her confident writing style: 'Every family is a war but some are more civil than others.'" (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

"Namwali Serpell’s vibrant, intellectually rich debut novel, The Old Drift, is in keeping in that tradition, and like any good nation-hoovering novel, it too refuses to conform to expectations.... This oddball cast of characters simply represents the joys of the picaresque novel, in which the author’s set design is intentionally surreal and ironic.... Serpell is a natural social novelist, capable of conjuring a Dickensian range of characters with a painterly eye for detail." (The Washington Post)

Brilliant

Brilliantly interwoven storytelling , cast of characters, Beautiful language, Challenging ideas, revolutionary politics, and great readers.

Supreme narration of an epic African saga.

Amazing. A narrative triumph! A book to listen to more than once both for the story and the voices.

Fantastic read!

everyone in the book has such an interesting life experience, and the glimpses into these joyful, tragic lives are given in such a way that one can feel the universal experience of humanity. This together with the uniqueness of the individual and those elements that make us ourselves. gripping!

Maybe the author was overly ambitious?

The Old Drift is a multi-part saga. The story and writing hang together well in the first two parts, but then things get very messy in the third part. Too bad as the character development and plots and sub-plots are engrossing . Part 3 reads more like vignettes than the type of tight and effective story-telling in the first two parts.

Excellent narration

This is a great story, but what was really amazing was the narration of Adjoa Andoh. The book has characters of many nationalities and mixed nationalities, and she hits the accents spot on.

Saga of 3 families in Zambia over a century

I loved this book about the history of Zambia told through the lives of 3 interconnected families, one black,one white, one brown.
There are memorable characters, a bit of magical realism, relationships and reconnections over 3 generations. I had to go back to the first chapter to read the setup of 3 family relationship that occurs due to a ferocious child of one family.

The Reader has an incredible ability to take on many African and European accents and though there were zillions of Zambians, each had their own cadence and personality. I had listened to a Angela Carter novel read by the same actor. She was 100 times more enjoyable on this adventure. She seems to choose wondrous , character-laden romps to narrate.

I highly recommend this book . Its worth every moment.

A great read! Mwa bombeni Namwali!

I haven’t been pulled into a great read in along time.
This was an intriguing chronological tale of great characters and families. The interweaving of the stories into known historic events is genius!
The ‘epilogue’ summary of each chapter was brilliantly crafted and well read. Highlight of my read.

The characters came to life so vividly. I wanted to know and hear more about each of them.
It’s a gift to have relived my own childhood through some of the places and similar experiences mentioned in the book.

Thanks Namwali 😊😊

On Par with the Greats

This was a slow rollercoaster of a story, with amazing performances that really brought the characters to life. It's a little of every kind of story.

Unbelievable

I thought it was impossible for a single work to cover so many enormous topics over such a long period of time and still somehow stick the landing. Namwali Serpell has done it, she’s achieved that impossibility with a style and beauty that I have never seen before. Standing ovation, lifelong fan.

A Joy to listen to

Listening to the story being read by someone who was able to distinguish the many voices and accents was a delight. It enabled me to feel completely immersed in the story. I loved the combination of historical fiction with a mystical past and imagined tech-heavy future. I loved all the characters. The writing and performance will stay with me a long while.