Namwali Serpell on a Novel 19 Years in the Making
Namwali Serpell’s debut novel, The Old Drift, is the extraordinary culmination of 19 years of work. During that period, excerpts from the book appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories and won the Caine Prize in 2015.
Spanning centuries, the novel begins at the “Old Drift,” a colonial settlement at the banks of the Zambezi River, near Victoria Falls in Zambia. Here, in 1904, a mistake, a seemingly minor act of violence between a British colonist and an Italian hotelier, sets off a tale that drifts through three generations of Zambian families. The book, in three parts—The Grandmothers, The Mothers, and The Children— centers around nine major characters, seven of whom are women. Most striking of these are the grandmothers, Sibilla, Agnes, and Martha.
An associate professor of English at UC Berkeley, Serpell and I chatted about her writing process and her new novel.
The Millions: What first struck me was the poetic quality of your sentences. Their playful musicality makes me want to ask about your interest in poetry and how it influences your work?
Poetry is the
