![]() What starts as a story steeped in real colonial history eventually moves into the present and beyond-an invented near-future. ![]() There is a timeless quality to Serpell’s storytelling-or perhaps a sense that her novel moves almost independent of time. ![]() The book chronicles the interwoven lives of three families, cast against the creation of Zambia itself. From there, Serpell introduces a cast of characters that ranges from the everyday to the fantastical. The story begins in 1904, when an unlikely incident (Percy accidentally rips a patch of hair off another man’s head) sets off a chain of events that reverberates through the decades. And in just about every way, it succeeds. Part historical fiction, part futurism, part fantasy, Serpell’s hundred-year saga of three families and their intertwined fortunes is as unique as it is ambitious. ![]() So begins The Old Drift, an expansive yet intricate novel that bends, inverts and at times ignores conventions of time and place. ![]() Early in Namwali Serpell’s brilliant and many-layered debut novel, a turn-of-the-century British colonialist named Percy Clark wanders through the corner of what was then called Northwest Rhodesia (and is now the nation of Zambia) and complains: “I do seem plagued by the unpunishable crimes of others.” It is, in a sense, a fitting slogan for the many ruinous aftereffects of colonialism, except here it is spoken by an agent and beneficiary of the colonizer. ![]()
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