The Old Drift: A Novel / Serpell, Namwali

An Amazon Best Book of March 2019: Making good on the publisher’s claim of being "the great Zambian novel you didn’t know you were waiting for," this ambitious novel follows three very different founding families across generations, from 19th-century Europe to the banks of the near-future Zambezi river. The first matriarch we meet is Silliba, illegitimate daughter of an Italian noble and his housecleaner, born covered in hair that regrows as fast as it is cut. Next is Agnes, a rising tennis star - until she loses her sight. She secretly flees her wealthy, British parents to return to the home of her Rhodesian lover...who notices small eyes growing on her that recede on closer inspection. We then meet Matha, a young African woman coming of age as Zambia becomes a nation in the 1960s. These intertwining stories are as steeped in a solemn strain of magical realism as they are in actual history: the plot’s fantastical elements reveal the cruelties and absurdities of real-world colonialism. Ultimately, this novel’s chief pleasure lies in watching wildly varying lives daub together to produce a cross-century portrait of a country. --Katy Ball, Amazon Book Review
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