The Old Drift
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Summary
**Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2020**
'The great African novel of the twenty-first century' Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater
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.
In 1904, 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 his fate with those of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy.
So begins a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
'Extraordinary, ambitious, evocative, dazzling' Salman Rushdie
'Brilliant . . . heartbreaking' Sunday Times
'Charming, heartbreaking and breathtaking' Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
'The great African novel of the twenty-first century' Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater
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.
In 1904, 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 his fate with those of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy.
So begins a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
'Extraordinary, ambitious, evocative, dazzling' Salman Rushdie
'Brilliant . . . heartbreaking' Sunday Times
'Charming, heartbreaking and breathtaking' Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
Reviews
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
