The Furrows
From the Prize-winning author of The Old Drift
Published on 25. August 2022
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-1-78109-084-8 (ISBN)
Description
***ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2022***
***NYT BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR***
*** GUARDIAN BEST FICTION OF 2022***
I don't want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.
Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother Wayne is seven. One day, when they're alone together, there's an accident and Wayne is lost forever. Though his body is never recovered, their mother can't stop searching. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt: how do you grieve an absence? And how does it feel?
As C grows older, she relives and retells her story, and she sees her brother everywhere: in cafes, aeroplane aisles, subway cars. Here is her brother's older face, the light in his eyes, his lanky limbs, the way he seems to recognise her, too. But it can't be, of course. Or can it? And then one day, there's another accident, and C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who's also searching for someone, as well as his own place in the world. His name is Wayne.
Namwali Serpell's piercing new novel captures the ongoing and uncanny experience of grief, as the past breaks over the present, like waves in the sea. The Furrows is a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a masterful story of mistaken identity, slippery reality, black experience, and the wishful and sometimes wilful longing for reunion with those we've lost.
'In Namwali Serpell's hands, grief is a kind of possession. The Furrows is a piercing, sharply written novel about the conjuring power of loss' - RAVEN LEILANI, author of Luster
***NYT BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR***
*** GUARDIAN BEST FICTION OF 2022***
I don't want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.
Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother Wayne is seven. One day, when they're alone together, there's an accident and Wayne is lost forever. Though his body is never recovered, their mother can't stop searching. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt: how do you grieve an absence? And how does it feel?
As C grows older, she relives and retells her story, and she sees her brother everywhere: in cafes, aeroplane aisles, subway cars. Here is her brother's older face, the light in his eyes, his lanky limbs, the way he seems to recognise her, too. But it can't be, of course. Or can it? And then one day, there's another accident, and C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who's also searching for someone, as well as his own place in the world. His name is Wayne.
Namwali Serpell's piercing new novel captures the ongoing and uncanny experience of grief, as the past breaks over the present, like waves in the sea. The Furrows is a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a masterful story of mistaken identity, slippery reality, black experience, and the wishful and sometimes wilful longing for reunion with those we've lost.
'In Namwali Serpell's hands, grief is a kind of possession. The Furrows is a piercing, sharply written novel about the conjuring power of loss' - RAVEN LEILANI, author of Luster
Reviews / Votes
Serpell is a terrific destabiliser, even at the level of the sentence... There are no tidy moral lessons at the end of her dissonant and time-contorting fable - no bones to bury, no truth to pin, no mysteries solved - only the inescapable rhythms of loss -- Beejay Silcox * The Guardian * A masterfully intelligent and many-sided book * The Telegraph * The Furrows...confirms Serpell's place as one of the most innovative and intelligent writers today * Financial Times * In Namwali Serpell's hands, grief is a kind of possession. The Furrows is a piercing, sharply written novel about the conjuring power of loss -- Raven Leilani, author of Luster Masterful: a blend of self-knowing, sincere and spry... Serpell's sentences are unhurried, yet detailed, smart and brisk * Sunday Telegraph * Namwali Serpell's deep unity of imagery and voice is at the employ of a wild talent for narrative pivot and surprise; what seems at first a meditation on family trauma unfolds through the urgency of an amnesiac puzzle-thriller, then a violently compelling love story. The final pages take flight with visionary intensity. The Furrows is a genuine tour de force -- Jonathan Lethem, author of The Arrest Who could have imagined that a novel about loss and long grieving could be so soaring, so sexy, so luminously beautiful and poetic, such a rich and shimmeringly scored piece for three voices?... We are lucky to have this alive, exhilarating novel remind us how inexhaustible and surprising the form is and continues to be -- Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others What makes The Furrows so thrilling is its ability to constantly surprise and keep us on the edge of our seats. But its real brilliance rests in Namwali Serpell's bold and audacious refusal to allow the complicated layers of guilt and grief to remain unexplored. In this spectacular and genre-bending book, she has permanently shifted the ground beneath us, and where we stand by the end is in a new place where mourning and longing and sensuality not only exist at once, but transform into something revelatory, and perhaps even healing -- Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King The furrows of grief, in Namwali Serpells's telling, are a surreal and hypnotic fantasy. This book reads like a ghost story, a murder mystery, a thriller, a redemptive love story that never loses its knife edge of danger. A daring and masterful book about how we respond to the mystery of death -- Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss Namwali Serpell has written a stunning and highly original novel exploring the erotic shadow-life of grief. In Serpell's hands, longing becomes a story of uncanny repetition, and the logic of dreams feels intensely, compellingly real -- Isabella Hammad, author of The Parisian Beautifully written... it blew me away -- Zoe Wicomb, author of Still Life Namwali Serpell's gift soars...She takes pain and loss and cooks up a storm. Currents of grief, guilt and greed are unpicked with ruthless precision. . . The Furrows establishes her as a literary powerhouse -- Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, author of The First Woman Grief is dogged company. It shapeshifts and proliferates, hijacking thoughts and ravaging sleep. But Namwali Serpell's riveting prose urges me to believe that sometimes the true work of grief is to rupture us so thoroughly, we become capable of telling--and living--another story -- Tracy K. Smith, poet and author of Ordinary Light The Furrows is a deeply felt novel that deserves to be read. So eloquent and assured that I easily fell into this sweeping, gut-wrenching tale of loss, grief, and identity -- Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun Brilliant... A heart-racing, heart-wrenching stunner that sizzles, with complex questions floating under the thrilling story. This is a novel not to be missed -- Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored PeopleMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 144 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
407 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78109-084-8 (9781781090848)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. She has received a 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction, 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 for fiction, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, and the Los Angeles Times' 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. Her short story, 'Take It', was a finalist for the 2020 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. She is a Professor of English at Harvard.