The Old Drift

Lore & Background

The novel is a saga that follows three families living in Zambia across three generations. These families are intertwined by the actions of the novel's first narrator, Percy M. Clark, who is based on a real man from Cambridge, England, who moved to Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in the early 20th century as one of Europe's many colonists across the African continent. 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. He details the settlement's changing name, its growing population, and his racist views of the native Zambians. 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. This Zambian boy reappears when Percy accidentally shoots him one day, and later learns that his name is N'gulube. 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).

Reader's Guide

The Old Drift is significant as a debut novel that blends historical fiction and science fiction to explore the intergenerational consequences of colonialism in Zambia. Its narrative experiments with different forms, as noted by NPR's Annalisa Quinn, who described the style as 'florid, but the excess often comes with a point.' The novel challenges genre boundaries, with The Observer's review noting that by the end, set in a near future involving a new digital device embedded in the user's skin, readers realize how Serpell tests assumptions about science fiction as a mode for the great African novel. The novel's legacy includes winning both the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, marking it as a work that crosses literary and speculative fiction categories. Its reception highlighted its ambitious scope, with Dwight Garner in The New York Times calling it 'as ambitious as any first novel published this decade.'

Did You Know?

• The Old Drift won both the 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
• The novel's plot is set in motion when Percy's actions cause a young girl to strike a Zambian boy, leaving him 'forever smiling at the daisies.'
• The story follows three generations of families: the Grandmothers, the Mothers, and their Children.

The Three-Generation Saga

The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell's 2019 debut, is structured as a sweeping family saga rooted in Northern Rhodesia—now Zambia—spanning three generations of interconnected lives. The narrative engine is a single violent incident in the settlement of The Old Drift, near Victoria Falls, where the novel's first narrator, Percy M. Clark, a European colonist modeled on a real Cambridge-born man who emigrated to the region in the early twentieth century, witnesses a young girl strike a Zambian boy with such force that, in Percy's own words, the child "became an imbecile, forever smiling at the daisies." Percy later accidentally shoots the same boy, identified as N'gulube, and this chain of events becomes the seed from which three family lines grow. Serpell maps these lines across three tiers: the Grandmothers (Sibilla, Agnes, and Matha), the Mothers (Sylvia, Isabella, and Thandiwe), and the Children (Joseph, Jacob, and Naila). The novel slowly unravels how one settler's racist worldview and a single act of violence ripple outward through decades, binding these families into a shared, inescapable history.

Genre-Bending and Narrative Experimentation

What makes The Old Drift distinctive is its deliberate refusal to sit comfortably inside a single genre. Serpell braids historical fiction with science fiction, carrying the story from colonial-era Northern Rhodesia into a near future where a digital device is embedded directly in the user's skin. The Observer's review highlighted how this structural choice forces readers to confront a gap in literary expectation: why science fiction has rarely been treated as a viable mode for the great African novel. Serpell also shifts narrative form throughout, presenting the same world through different voices and perspectives. NPR critic Annalisa Quinn observed that the novel's descriptive excess is not mere ornament but a conscious strategy, offering three distinct ways humans relate to space—as something legible and predictable, as a resource to exploit, and as a source of beauty and awe. By rotating viewpoints and tonal registers, Serpell ensures that no single interpretation of the Zambian landscape or its people dominates, inviting readers to hold contradictory truths simultaneously.

Critical Acclaim

The Old Drift drew immediate and enthusiastic praise from major literary outlets upon its 2019 release. Nadifa Mohamed, writing in The Guardian, called it a "rambunctious epic" and praised Serpell as "an ambitious and talented writer, with the chutzpah to work on a huge canvas," singling out the novel's scope in tracing intertwined family histories across three generations. Dwight Garner of The New York Times went further, declaring the debut "a dazzling book, as ambitious as any first novel published this decade," and admitted it "made the skin on the back of my neck prickle." The Observer's review emphasized the novel's structural cunning, noting that Serpell "slyly tests our assumptions" before a "cunning last-minute swerve" recontextualizes the entire reading experience. NPR's Annalisa Quinn acknowledged the prose could feel florid but argued the excess always served a purpose, reinforcing the idea that the novel's stylistic choices were deliberate rather than indulgent. Collectively, these reviews positioned Serpell's first book not as a promising debut but as a landmark achievement in contemporary fiction.

Awards and Debut Significance

As Namwali Serpell's first published novel, The Old Drift arrived in 2019 and immediately established the Zambian author as a major new voice in world literature. The book's dual genre identity—part historical fiction, part science fiction—was recognized by the awarding bodies that honored it. In 2020, it received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a prize that celebrates works reflecting the African experience and its global impact. It also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a distinction typically associated with science fiction, which underscored how Serpell's novel defied easy categorization and expanded the boundaries of what the genre could encompass. The fact that a debut novel from a Zambian author, set primarily in Northern Rhodesia and Zambia, could claim both of these prestigious honors in the same year speaks to the book's singular ambition. Serpell's decision to center colonial violence, its generational aftermath, and a speculative future within a single narrative arc demonstrated that the African literary tradition could absorb and transform the science fiction mode without dilution, a point the critical reception repeatedly underscored.