![]() It spans a couple of centuries and tracks three families over four generations, animating the events of Zambian history with Namwali’s unique application of obsessive research, beautiful prose, playful genre-blending, and futurecasting. Namwali’s book, out March 26, is a massive multi-generational novel 20 years in the making. She had just read mine, The Golden State, and I had a chance to read an early copy of hers, The Old Drift. ![]() We bonded over the joyful agony of publishing our debut novels, which we exchanged. ![]() ![]() when she was 8, and then back to Zambia when she was 15 for a shorter stint). Over the next six months, we had a series of friend dates and conversations about reading, writing, and our respective upbringings moving between continents (I’m a foreign service brat Namwali was born in Zambia, moved to the U.S. Over the course of the evening, which involved karaoke, it became clear that I had met a kindred spirit, a writer and reader with a deeply held appreciation for ‘90s hits (no anti-Alanis sentiments here) and genre fiction, which she was teaching to her students at UC Berkeley. I met Namwali Serpell last fall while we both hovered over the cheese plate at an event at the Ruby, a women’s co-working space in San Francisco. ![]() Photo: Penguin Random House, Peg Korpinski ![]()
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