PositiveThe NationThe Old Drift, asks a lot of big questions about Zambia but also more generally about the history of the postcolonial world ... The scope of these questions is necessarily too wide even for a novel of nearly 600 pages, but just raising them opens us up to a world humming with human life and complexity, and some nonhuman murmurings ... The novel’s wide scope, however, doesn’t prevent it from being extremely specific, as attuned to the light and smell and intimacy of everyday life as it is to the violence and inequalities of colonialism and patriarchy ... Serpell is a master portraitist: Even the tertiary characters have distinct personalities of their own, and the moments of human connection are frequent and genuinely touching ... Serpell is a nimble storyteller, weaving this web of connections delicately and convincingly. She also deftly engages with the ever-evolving political and moral questions that these intersecting families face in a changing Zambia, and she has a sharp eye for the contradictions and hypocrisies of Europeans in Africa ... While she was writing The Old Drift, Serpell jokingly referred to it as \'The Great Zambian Novel.\' But it delivers on that tagline. It’s a study in the creation of a national consciousness, casting a sharp eye on how history gets made and remembered.
