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Namwali Serpell

Biography

Namwali Serpell

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. Her debut novel, THE OLD DRIFT, won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, THE FURROWS, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was selected as one of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her book of essays, STRANGER FACES, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Harvard University.

Namwali Serpell

Books by Namwali Serpell

On Morrison
by Namwali Serpell - Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical Black female writer --- and her work is highly complex.” In ON MORRISON, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form. This is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre --- her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry --- with contextual guidance and original close readings.

The Furrows
by Namwali Serpell - Fiction

Cassandra Williams is 12, and her little brother, Wayne, is seven. One day, when they’re alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. Their father leaves and starts another family elsewhere. But their mother can’t give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children. As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in bistros, airplane aisles, subway cars. Here is her brother’s face, the light in his eyes, the way he seems to recognize her, too. But it can’t be, of course. Or can it? Then one day, in another accident, C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who is also searching for someone and for his own place in the world. His name is Wayne.

The Old Drift
by Namwali Serpell - Fiction, Historical Fiction

1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives --- their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes --- emerge through a panorama of history, fairy tale, romance and science fiction.