Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

 

 

“A dazzling debut, establishing Namwali Serpell as a writer on the world stage.”—Salman Rushdie, The New York Times Book Review
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Dwight Garner, The New York Times • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Atlantic • BuzzFeed • Tordotcom • Kirkus Reviews • BookPage

WINNER OF: The Arthur C. Clarke Award • The Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award • The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction • The Windham-Campbell Prizes for 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, fairytale, romance and science fiction.

From a woman covered with hair and another plagued with endless tears, to forbidden love affairs and fiery political ones, to homegrown technological marvels like Afronauts, microdrones and viral vaccines, this gripping, unforgettable novel is a testament to our yearning to create and cross borders, and a meditation on the slow, grand passage of time.
 
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize • Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

“An intimate, brainy, gleaming epic . . . This is a dazzling book, as ambitious as any first novel published this decade.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
 
“A founding epic in the vein of Virgil’s Aeneid . . . though in its sprawling size, its flavor of picaresque comedy and its fusion of family lore with national politics it more resembles Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“A story that intertwines strangers into families, which we'll follow for a century, magic into everyday moments, and the story of a nation, Zambia.”—NPR

 

Old Enough to Save the Planet by Loll Kirby, illustrated by Adelina Lirius

 

 

An inspiring look at young climate change activists who are changing the world
 
The world is facing a climate crisis like we’ve never seen before. And kids around the world are stepping up to raise awareness and try to save the planet. As people saw in the youth climate strike in September 2019, kids will not stay silent about this subject—they’re going to make a change. Meet 12 young activists from around the world who are speaking out and taking action against climate change. Learn about the work they do and the challenges they face, and discover how the future of our planet starts with each and every one of us.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

 

 

His best. Time may show it to be the best single piece of any of us, I mean his and my contemporaries.” – William Faulkner.

The Old Man and the Sea, an apparently simple fable, represents the mature Hemingway at his best, and it is still one of his most read books. In 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.”

Hemingway’s style was famously simple. In responding to a critic, he said “Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.” Using these simpler and better words he tells the unforgettable story of Santiago, an old Cuban fisherman down on his luck, who goes out alone far from the shore in search of one last victory and catches a huge marlin longer than his boat. He is tested to the very limits of his skill and strength and returns “destroyed but not defeated.” This, of course, also refers to Hemingway, who, in his last years, was in constant pain from years of adventures and accidents but still able to do his best work. A classic novella that can be read in a single sitting.

Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and sportsman. He loved Cuba, where he had a home, and where he placed his Nobel Prize medal in the custody of the Catholic Church for the benefit of the local people. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—has had a strong influence on twentieth-century fiction. Many of his books are considered classics of American literature. Writer Richard Ford calls Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Faulkner “the Three Kings who set the measure for every writer since.”