Nation, Voice, and Character in “the Great Zambian Novel”: A Critical Reading of The Old Drift

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Combining the objective voice of an omniscient narrator and the ironic “we” of a mosquito chorus, mixing “writerly” and “readerly” elements, The Old Drift (2019) adapts the family saga to a modern genealogical narrative of Zambia as a rainbow nation. A return to and settlement in an African “home” contrast thematically with the migratory, “Afropolitan” fiction of other African writers in the diaspora. Set largely in the capital city, as in recent novels by other Zambian women writers, the novel endorses a radical urban space. Yet its compacted, multilayered, subtle, allusive, and elliptical style, its copious range of characters and frequent shifts of place and time serendipitously woven into an intricate plot, come at a price. In Jamesonian terms, the “waning of affect” and postmodern “depthlessness” treat historical events as mediated simulations; they silence characters whose lack of inner life prevents empathy, prioritizes images and surfaces over internal feelings, and implicitly rejects the binarism of inner and outer. Thus revolution is a game played by a privileged few, since the struggle of the masses to overthrow an oppressive system is an unusable cliché.