The Old Drift

Starred review from January 15, 2019
The past, present, and future of an African nation is filtered with humane wit, vibrant rhetoric, and relentless ingenuity through the interweaving sagas of three very different families.The year is 1904, and an itinerant would-be photographer named Percy Clark has wandered from his native England to a colonial outpost along the Zambezi River in what was then known as the Northwestern Rhodesia territory. One momentous day, Clark, addled by fever, is stumbling around the lobby of the Victoria Falls Hotel and somehow manages to inadvertently pull a hank of hair from the pate of the hotel's Italian manager, whose 5-year-old daughter angrily responds by striking an "innocent native" passer-by so hard that "he became an imbecile." From the moment that inexplicable calamity occurs, the descendants of these individuals find their respective fates entwined through what's left of the 20th century and beyond as the land around them morphs into the nation of Zambia. Sometime in the 1960s, for instance, Percy's wealthy granddaughter, Agnes, deprived by blindness of a promising tennis career, falls in love with a brilliant black exchange student whom she accompanies back to the soon-to-be-independent Zambia he calls home. During those same years, Matha, the precocious granddaughter of the poor assault victim, is among several math-and-science prodigies recruited by the country's Minister of Space Research to train for a mission to the moon by decade's end. Strangest of all these progenies is Sibilla, the granddaughter of the hotel manager, who is born with streams and streams of hair that never stops growing--and apparently makes things grow out of the ground, too. The children and the children's children of these women find themselves inexorably, absurdly, and at times tragically drawn together through the history of both Zambia and the patch of land where their ancestors first collided. Blending intimate and at times implausible events with real-life history, this first novel by Serpell--a Zambian writer who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and who's won the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story "The Sack"--enchants its readers with prose as luxuriant and flowing as Sibilla's hair.Comparisons with Gabriel García Márquez are inevitable and likely warranted. But this novel's generous spirit, sensory richness, and visionary heft make it almost unique among magical realist epics.

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Starred review from February 1, 2019
Proudly uncategorizable, Serpell's excellent first novel traverses a shifting genre landscape while delving into Zambia's tumultuous history in intimate detail. The Old Drift is a settlement along the Zambezi River, in which the novel begins in the early twentieth century. It concludes in 2023, covering British colonialism, the Kariba Dam's construction, Zambian independence, the AIDS epidemic, and more. To err is human, that's your doom and delight, pronounces the unusual swarm of creatures narrating the story, which emphasizes the circumstantial and genetic chances affecting one's life. While a genealogical chart reveals people's connections, the plot remains surprising. The tale of Sibilla, a hirsute Italian woman, has fairy-tale echoes. Matha, a teenage girl, trains as an astronaut, while other characters play major roles in medical research. From the Shiwa Ng'andu estate to the Kalingalinga compound, the deeply human, ethnically diverse characters fall in love, grieve, betray one another, and make shocking choices. In this smartly composed epic, magical realism and science fiction interweave with authentic history, and the colour bar, the importance of female education, and the consequences of technological change figure strongly. It's also a unique immigration story showing how people from elsewhere are enfolded into the country's fabric. While a bit too lengthy, Serpell's novel is absorbing, occasionally strange, and entrenched in Zambian culture?in all, an unforgettable original.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2019

DEBUT In 1904, across the Zambezi River from the Old Drift colonial settlement, one Percy M. Clark, plagued with fever, pulls the hat--and a large amount of hair--off of Italian hotelier Pietro Gavuzzi. Pietro's daughter Lina then hits young native N'gulube. Thus starts a generational story of three families that cannot escape one another. Chapters unfold through the eyes of the grandmothers, including one with hair all over her body; the mothers; then the children; with the accounts of the grandchildren--Joseph, Jacob, and Naila--leading readers into the future of Zambia. Three multicultural families' pasts and presents, told by a swarming chorus of voices, culminate in a tale as mysterious as it is timeless. VERDICT This stunning cross-genre debut draws on Zambian history and is twisted with inverted stereotypes and explicit racist language that only reinforces the far-flung exploration of humanity. [See Prepub Alert, 9/24/18.]--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2019

From Zambia-born, California-based Caine Prize winner Serpell, this large-scaled saga follows three curse-ridden families over three generations, beginning with David Livingstone greeting the Victoria Falls and ending in 2050 southern Africa. And those buzzing mosquitoes? They're a Greek chorus.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.