Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka, Zambia, and lives in New York. She received a 2020 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing, and a 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; it was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review and one of Time magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year. Her nonfiction book, Stranger Faces, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. She is currently a professor of English at Harvard.
"A triumph . . . so visceral it leaves the reader breathless.”—New
York Magazine
“A novel that reclaims and refashions the genre of the elegy,
charging it with as much eros as pathos.”—The New Yorker
“With warmth and dexterity, Serpell has crafted a narrative that
underscores how loss can show us the depths of our love.”—Time
“Intimate . . . a miasmic journey through grief and identity,
terror and uncertainty, that is finely and compellingly
wrought.”—Los Angeles Times
“The Furrows is an English major’s dream date. Serpell taps
influences across genres, from Virginia Woolf to Dashiell Hammett
to Toni Morrison.”—The Star Tribune
“Surreal and magical . . . confirms Serpell’s place as one of the
most innovative and intelligent writers today.”—Financial Times
“A wrenching examination of grief, memory, and reality . . .
Let this breathtaking novel roll over you in
waves.”—Esquire
“Is there anything more exciting than an artist in their prime? The
Furrows follows Namwali Serpell’s tremendous debut . . . with an
even more intimate, subversive novel . . .”—Chicago Tribune
“A gorgeous, surreal meditation on identity and mourning, one that
squeezes the heartstrings and rarely relaxes its grip.”—Vulture
“A powerful exploration of grief, memory, and loss that
becomes part of a larger story of Black identity and double
consciousness.”—Poets & Writers
“Enthralling . . . Serpell [is] utterly unafraid to fuse and forge
genres, turning up the levels of suspense, mystery, and even
romance.”—The A.V. Club
“This extraordinary new novel explores love, loss, and longing in
new and unexpected ways.”—Ms.
“[A] gorgeous new novel about grief, hope, and what W.E.B. Du Bois
called ‘double consciousness.’”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Already earning its author comparisons to Toni Morrison. . .
Destined to end up on every Best of the Year list.”—Lit Hub
“Serpell continues to expand the possibilities of what literature
can accomplish.”—Booklist
“Stylistically refreshing and emotionally intense, cementing
Serpell’s place among the best writers going.”—Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
“A ghost story, a murder mystery, a thriller, a redemptive love
story that never loses its knife edge of danger. A daring
and masterful novel about how we respond
to the mystery of death.”—Kiran Desai
“A genuine tour de force.”—Jonathan Lethem
“A piercing, sharply written novel about the conjuring
power of loss."—Raven Leilani
“Riveting.”—Tracy K. Smith
“A triumph, a book that succeeds brilliantly in reconfiguring and
retuning itself.”—Jamel Brinkley
“Thrilling [in] its ability to constantly surprise and keep
us on the edge of our seats.”—Maaza Mengiste
“Who could have imagined that a novel about loss and long grieving
could be so soaring, so sexy, so luminously beautiful and
poetic.”—Neel Mukherjee
“A deeply felt novel that deserves to be read.”—Nicole Dennis-Benn
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