'Extraordinary, ambitious, evocative, dazzling' SALMAN RUSHDIE
On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift.
In 1904, 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 his fate with those of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy.
So begins a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.
'Brilliant . . . heartbreaking' Sunday Times
'Electric . . . Serpell is a major talent' Financial Times
'A novel that satisfies on all levels' Alice Sebold
'Charming, heartbreaking and breathtaking' Carmen Maria Machado
Longlisted for the Debut Crown Historical Writers Association Award 2019
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize 2019
Industry Reviews
"An intimate, brainy, gleaming epic... The reader who picks up The Old Drift is likely to be more than simply impressed. This is a dazzling book, as ambitious as any first novel published this decade. It made the skin on the back of my neck prickle...she's such a generous writer. The people and the ideas in The Old Drift, like dervishes, are set whirling"
