…Serpell is an ambitious and talented writer, with the chutzpah to work on a huge canvas.' The Observer's review concluded, 'By the end, set in a near future involving a new digital device embedded in the user’s skin, we realise how slyly Serpell is testing our assumptions, before a cunning last-minute swerve forces us to question why we don’t consider science fiction a viable mode for the great African novel.'

Reviewing it in The Guardian, Nadifa Mohamed wrote: 'Namwali Serpell’s first novel is a rambunctious epic that traces the intertwined histories of three families over three generations. The book received positive reviews from critics. This series of events is the cause behind the intertwining of the families, which is slowly revealed through the rest of the novel as Serpell details the lives of the family members on the family tree: the Grandmothers (Sibilla, Agnes, and Matha), the Mothers (Sylvia, Isabella, and Thandiwe), and their Children (Joseph, Jacob, and Naila). This Zambian boy reappears when Percy accidentally shoots him one day, and later learns that his name is N'gulubu. On one such occasion, Percy's actions at a bar one night cause a young girl to strike a young Zambian boy so hard that 'he became an imbecile, forever smiling at the daisies,' as Percy says.

He details the settlement's changing name, its growing population, and his racist views of the native Zambians.

In the novel's first chapter, Percy details some of his encounters as an early settler in The Old Drift, a settlement near Victoria Falls. Clark, who is based on a real man from Cambridge, England, who moved to Zambia (then Rhodesia) in the early 20th century as one of Europe's many colonists across the African continent. These families are intertwined by the actions of the novel's first narrator, Percy M.

The novel is a saga that follows three families: one Zambian, one Italian, and one Indian. It won the 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award as well as the Arthur C. Set in Rhodesia/ Zambia, it is Serpell's debut novel and follows the lives of three interwoven families in three generations. The Old Drift is a 2019 historical fiction and Science fiction novel by Zambian author Namwali Serpell.

The old drift by namwali serpell