Books from Zambia

Set in Zambia during the economic hardships of the 1990s, A Cowrie of Hope follows Nasula, a young widow determined to secure a better future for her daughter, Sula. After her husband’s death, Nasula refuses to accept the traditional expectation that she should marry her brother-in-law. Her independence comes at a terrible cost: her in-laws strip her of her possessions, leaving her struggling to survive in an impoverished rural community. Yet Nasula has a clear purpose. She believes that education will give Sula the opportunity to escape poverty and build a life free from the restrictions that have shaped her own. When she discovers that she cannot afford her daughter’s school fees, she travels to Lusaka to sell her last sack of valuable beans. In the city, however, she encounters exploitation and dangers that threaten everything she has worked for. Through Nasula’s determination, Sinyangwe portrays a woman’s struggle against poverty, patriarchy, and social injustice. Tender yet unflinching, the novel celebrates maternal love, female solidarity, and the courage required to imagine a different future.

Set in Lusaka, Zambia, in the late 1970s, Patchwork follows Pumpkin, a nine-year-old girl growing up between two contrasting worlds: the relative comfort provided by her wealthy father, Joseph Sakavungo, and the instability of life with her mother, Totela Ponga, whose struggle with alcoholism threatens their fragile family life. Born outside marriage, Pumpkin carries the stigma of her origins in a society where family reputation, social status, and traditional expectations shape people’s lives. Her father is a powerful businessman with political ambitions, and his involvement with multiple women creates a complicated web of jealousy, rivalry, and emotional dependence. As Pumpkin witnesses the consequences of adult choices, she begins to understand the contradictions underlying the respectable appearances of the people around her. Spanning three generations of women, the novel explores the ways love, betrayal, addiction, and gender expectations shape family relationships. Against the backdrop of a young nation navigating political ambition and social change, Pumpkin must gradually piece together her identity from the fragments of her family’s troubled history. Tender, bittersweet, and perceptive, Patchwork examines how childhood experiences influence the adults we become.

Beginning in 1904, near the magnificent Victoria Falls, The Old Drift follows three families whose lives become entangled across more than a century of Zambian history. It begins with a seemingly minor incident involving Percy M. Clark, a British settler, an Italian hotelier, and an African busboy—a mistake whose consequences ripple through generations. As the story unfolds, the families experience colonial rule, the struggle for independence, political upheaval, and the uncertainties of a rapidly changing modern world. Their histories are filled with forbidden love, betrayals, extraordinary ambitions, and unexpected connections. Serpell combines historical fiction with magical realism, folklore, romance, and science fiction, even imagining a future shaped by technological innovation and surveillance. The narrative itself is unconventional, narrated in part by a collective chorus of mosquitoes observing humanity’s follies. Ambitious, inventive, and richly layered, The Old Drift is both a multigenerational family saga and a meditation on how the past continues to shape the future of a nation. Through its interwoven lives, the novel explores the lasting legacies of colonialism, the complexity of national identity, and the unintended consequences of human actions.