I wrote a letter to a friend about The Old Drift
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In this episode of The Story Explorer, I’m reading you a letter I wrote to a friend.
My friend often works remotely in different parts of Africa, and last year she recommended that I read The Old Drift by the Zambian-born writer Namwali Serpell. This novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2020. This is a true epic: more than five hundred pages long. And after finishing it, I wanted nothing more than to sit down with my friend and talk about it. But she was deep in remote field research, far away and difficult to reach.
So instead, I wrote her a letter.
In that letter, I poured out my thoughts, my questions, and my analysis of this remarkable novel. And today, I’m sharing that letter with you. That way, you can hear my reflections on the book, and my friend can listen too, wherever she happens to be working.
In the letter, I unpack a label that is often attached to this novel: magical realism. Personally, I’m not convinced that label quite fits. In the episode, you'll hear why and what this book might be instead.
As I often do, I also linger on the epigraph. Serpell opens the novel with a line from The Aeneid, Book 6, by Virgil, in the translation by Seamus Heaney.
What echoes from that ancient Western epic inside this modern African one?I'll tell you. And what might it mean that Serpell chooses a line from a classical Latin poem to begin her story? My thoughts about this meaning making moment are in my letter.
And now, without further ado, tune in and let me read it to you.
My friend often works remotely in different parts of Africa, and last year she recommended that I read The Old Drift by the Zambian-born writer Namwali Serpell. This novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2020. This is a true epic: more than five hundred pages long. And after finishing it, I wanted nothing more than to sit down with my friend and talk about it. But she was deep in remote field research, far away and difficult to reach.
So instead, I wrote her a letter.
In that letter, I poured out my thoughts, my questions, and my analysis of this remarkable novel. And today, I’m sharing that letter with you. That way, you can hear my reflections on the book, and my friend can listen too, wherever she happens to be working.
In the letter, I unpack a label that is often attached to this novel: magical realism. Personally, I’m not convinced that label quite fits. In the episode, you'll hear why and what this book might be instead.
As I often do, I also linger on the epigraph. Serpell opens the novel with a line from The Aeneid, Book 6, by Virgil, in the translation by Seamus Heaney.
What echoes from that ancient Western epic inside this modern African one?I'll tell you. And what might it mean that Serpell chooses a line from a classical Latin poem to begin her story? My thoughts about this meaning making moment are in my letter.
And now, without further ado, tune in and let me read it to you.
Chapters
- 00:02 Introduction
- 04:34 Discovering real history behind "magic"
- 09:05 Epigraph analysis
- 13:24 Narrative structure and character analysis
- 17:24 Humorous observations and closing
