Literature & Ideas
Landmark
Namwali Serpell
born 1980
Won the Caine Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for The Old Drift
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Zambia Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Her first novel, The Old Drift, took Zambia's history from the colonial settlement on the Zambezi into a near future of drone swarms and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. She had already won the Caine Prize, and split the money with the other shortlisted writers.
Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and moved to the United States as a child. She won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2015 for the story The Sack, and told the other shortlisted writers beforehand that she intended to share the prize money with them, which she did.
The Old Drift, published in 2019, covers a century and a half of Zambia through three families — a novel that takes in the Victoria Falls settlement, the Zambian space programme of the 1960s, the HIV epidemic and a surveilled future — and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Furrows followed. She teaches literature at Harvard.
The Old Drift, published in 2019, covers a century and a half of Zambia through three families — a novel that takes in the Victoria Falls settlement, the Zambian space programme of the 1960s, the HIV epidemic and a surveilled future — and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Furrows followed. She teaches literature at Harvard.
- The Guardian — Namwali Serpell wins Arthur C Clarke award for The Old Drift
- Wikipedia — Namwali Serpell
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