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The Old Drift

A Novel

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The Old Drift

Von: Namwali Serpell
Gesprochen von: Adjoa Andoh, Richard E. Grant, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
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“A dazzling debut, establishing Namwali Serpell as a writer on the world stage.”—Salman Rushdie, The New York Times Book Review

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Dwight Garner, The New York Times • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Atlantic • BuzzFeed • Tordotcom • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage

WINNER: 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

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

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, fairytale, 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.

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 . . . thoughin 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 Belletristik Familienleben Historische Romane Science Fiction
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...but you probably need the right headspace to appreciate it properly. In general, the book is an excellent family saga. The language is (beautifully) convoluted, English is seamlessly mixed with other languages (my only complaint is that, as an Italian native speaker, I cringed when the Italian characters spoke Italian). I absolutely loved learning about Zambia history and spent lots of additional time researching it. I enjoyed greatly finding out that the Ba Nkoloso interview is available on YouTube!
As a family saga, it calls to mind other books, which for me was mostly "The Viceroys" by De Roberto.
I really recommend this book, just take your time to take it in, as listening to it as background just won't do

This book is objectively beautiful...

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