I DNF’d this book at 25%. I enjoyed the writing style but felt frustrated by the disconnected stories and could not find the motivation to see this book through to the end. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me the opportunity to read this book. I hope it will find it’s way into the right readers’ hands!

The Old Drift a gorgeously written novel so lyrical an amazing first novel .Norman Zepwel draws us into Zambia its history families unfold before our eyes in this sprawling novel.Not a fast read a book you need to sit and savor.Highly recommend I’ve been reading rave reviews everywhere and add mine to the group.#netgalley #theolddrift# Crown.

The Old Drift is a stunning debut novel from Zambian author Namwali Serpell. Atmospheric and enthralling, the story spans multiple genres and generations. It follows 3 Zambian families and details how their lives shift and change with colonialism, politics, and technology. Serpell's unique style is mesmerizing and shifts the story with a fairytale-like narrative. The book is long but worth the investment. I look forward to reading more from Namwali Serpell.

The Old Drift, by Namwali Serpell, is an ambitious, sprawling, epic story of four generations of three families—one white, one black, one brown—spanning the hundred years from early 20th century colonial life in what was then Rhodesia to the early 21st century in what becomes the African country of Zambia. Attempting a plot summary of such a sweeping book is unwieldy and unnecessary, since its themes are the important element in Serpell’s book, as she unites the stories of each of the generations by unifying ideas: disenfranchisement, whether because of race, sex or economic status, and sometimes all three; the push/pull of the traditional with the modern; and the idea of the “butterfly effect,” which a character in the last generation evokes to describe the immune system but which also describes the overall structure of the book, as each of the three families are inextricably connected over time through a series of random, seemingly unimportant interactions.

These emerging connections are part of the fun of reading this book, as the seemingly freestanding opening section told by an English colonial settler slowly reveals itself to be the lynchpin on which the three families’ future fortunes turn. There are a lot of other things to like about this book, primarily the writing, which is lush and beautiful. (A typical scene: “The fire shuddered in its stone cave and the cigars puffed like chimneys and the glasses of cognac cast copper on the walls.”) There is so much history about early Rhodesia and the birth of Zambia was which fascinating and largely unknown to me. And the book viscerally conveys—more than any book I’ve read since All the Beautiful Forevers—the experience of living in a slum compound, in this case Kalingalinga, particularly in its depictions of the marginalized women living there and their very limited and sometimes horrific options for survival. (I loved the line, “She stepped from the trashy bedlam of the road into the cool cave of the shop, relieved to escape the experience of walking outside while female.”)

There’s so much stuffed into this book, in fact—the fight for independence; the dire AIDS crisis; the dehumanizing and potentially punitive uses of technology; magical realism; science fiction—that The Old Drift can at times feel like a big, unwieldy mishmash of ideas. But it’s never not compelling, and it’s never not smart—even when it occasionally sagged a bit for me during some of the characters’ stories. It’s hard to believe this is Namwali Serpell’s first book; I look forward to more.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Hogarth/Penguin Random House for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

The Old Drift is quite hard to pin down. It is fantastically written, though sometimes the changes were disorienting to me and I had to recenter myself and sometimes reread a little. The story spans generations and viewpoints to bring us the stories (can't say story because there is so much going on here) that begin in The Old Drift. Reading is often emotional, but it is also playful and fantastic. Highly recommend.

How much do you know about Zambia? If you're like me, probably not much. This wonderfully written, sprawling novel, however, may well inspire you (like me) to read more about its history and culture. Told through the eyes of three families, all linked in ways that might not be immediately obvious, this is a mix of fact and fiction, with some magical realism to boot. Beginning in 1904 and moving through the century to 2020, it's a sometimes frustrating look at a country and its people. Parts of this do drag a bit but power through because there's always something different around the corner. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Note that this is a long novel and might even be best read in hard copy to take best advantage of the family tree.

Absolutely gorgeous tour de force that stumbles a bit toward the end but is still a magnificent debut novel. The Old Drift tells a multigenerational story about Zambians with roots in that land, England, India, and Italy. The book spans the 20th century and finishes in the near future, and Serpell's mastery of the numerous POV characters is brilliant. Her way with words left me highlighting passages just so I could return to them and revel in their poetry.

My only hesitation is in the slightly trite turn the book takes in its final section, which seemed much more allegorical and less believable than the preceding parts. But I heartily recommend this book to anyone who loves sweeping novels and well written prose, and I can't wait to see what Serpell writes next.

Thank you to NetGalley for the preview copy. I have mixed feelings about this novel. Long, yes... too long- perhaps. The initial set of female characters seems to get lost pretty quickly as we move from the exploration of Zambia, the the freedom of Zambia, to the exploitation of Zambia to ? the end of Zambia, the end of humanity?

The final generation made the biggest impact on my reading of the novel, again, perhaps because all the characters got blurred over time. The glimpses of Africa, of colonialism, and neocolonialism, of race and gender issues, with The Virus popping in and out, were intriguing, but honestly, it was just a little too much to put into one novel. I wish it was 3 books.

Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift is a blend of genres I have never seen before. On the one hand, it is very much a family saga. There is even a sprawling family tree included at the beginning of the book. But, by the end, it is an Afrofuturist revolutionary story. The various segments of the book combine to create a conclusive ending, but the plot meanders as much as the Zambesi River that appears to book end the whole tale.

The first narrator of The Old Drift almost put me off the entire book. Percy Clark is a typical British bwana who has fetched up in a place along the Zambesi called “The Old Drift” by its inhabitants. Clark shoots the local wildlife, demeans the indigenous Bemba, and who generally contributes nothing except his genetic material to progeny who will eventually intermarry with Bembas, Ndebeles, Telugu-speaking Indians, and Italians. As The Old Drift, well, drifts along, we see the people who will become the ancestors of the teens who will eventually transform Zambia into something like a utopia in the rushed ending to the book. We meet Sibilla, who has full body hirsutism, who has unknown connections to the Old Drift. Then there’s blind Agnes, who falls in love at with a visiting student from Zambia only to end up estranged from him in the same house, and Matha, who is trained to be one of Zambia’s first astronauts only to end up in poverty and incessantly weeping.

The stories contained within The Old Drift often revolve around the body; there are frequent references to menstrual blood, damaged eyes, and lots and lots of hair. It was hard for me to understand the grotesqueries wrapped up in so many of the female characters’ stories. (Although the book begins with a male character, most of this book is about women.) It was much easier for me to understand the theme of exploitation that ran through the book. Over and over, Zambia and its people are used for electricity, labor, and test subjects for mass experiments. It’s the same thing every generation and, until the characters are able to seize the means of production, it seems like it will keep going on indefinitely. (Marxism makes many appearances, too.) But this book is not poverty tourism. While characters are frequently exploited, they often find ways to carve out a bit of peace or comfort in their lives—not always, but often enough that I didn’t feel like the characters were completely doomed.

The Old Drift has been getting a lot of buzz. I confess, however, that I found the book uneven. Much of the book reads to me a bit like a Southern Gothic family epic, with plenty of closet-bound skeletons and genetic mutations. But the end of the book is straight-up science fiction. I had no idea that I would end up reading about cyborg body modifications or hive-minded micro drones based on the first chapter about a British man who was looking for an easy life in Africa. I think I might have liked the book better if it had used more genres. If Sibilla’s section had had more horror than it did and if Lionel’s had had a bit more thriller and if some of the other parts had had more that was unique about them, I think The Old Drift might have knocked my socks off.

As it is, I’m not entirely sure why this book is being talked about so much by critics and readers. This might just be another case (and there are many) of a book that just isn’t for me. Readers who enjoy family sagas and/or books set in places that don’t usually appear in popular literary fiction might like The Old Drift. Me, I think I’ll wait for something that’s either more generically cohesive or something that pulls out all the stops in the other direction.

Namwali Serpell provides us with a mammoth novel of multiple generations of Zambian families. Descriptions of jungle, weather and animals are stunning.
The characters lives are engaging as the reader is drawn into fascinating scenarios. I had to re-read some paragraphs to keep the characters straight in my mind.
The Old Drift is a huge novel, one that requires a commitment of engaged imagination and open minded thinking.
Thank You to NetGalley for the advance copy.
#TheOldDrift. #NetGalley

Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift is an epic tome spanning three generations of three families across three nationalities against a rich African backdrop. At over 600 pages, this is not for the faint of heart, but it is a deeply rewarding read that covers deep themes like politics and live with a dose of magical realism.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

The Old Drift by author Namwali Serpell is a high Egbert novel spanning many generations. It covers everything in life from love to loss in an outstanding voice!
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy of The Old Drift in exchange for an honest review.