The Old Drift (Hogarth Press, 2020), taken from Vigil s
The Aeneid, briefly narrates the story of a diverse civilisation thriving on the banks of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness that somnolently drifts past a populous throng of spirits. In Namwali Serphell s novel, the civilisation is Zambia, the Lethe s amnesia is the passage of time, and the spirits are a swarm of prophetic mosquitoes.
An intergenerational saga leaping from colonial to modern to a near-future Zambia set in 2024,
The Old Drift tells the story of the country through the eyes of three generations: The Grandmothers, The Mothers, and The Children. Although Zambia s colonial past gets lost in the riverine passage of time as symbolised by the Lethe, indelible imprints of that past remain on the present, on the beginnings of the three generations stories, and the interracial social fabric uniting them. At the end of each character s story, a swarm of mosquitoes narrates a summary and predict the characters fat