The Furrows

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

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

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

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 People

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

The Furrows is a triumph, a book that succeeds brilliantly in reconfiguring and retuning itself in pursuit of its essential subject. In this novel of grief, time flows, stretches, collapses, bends, stutters, and echoes, responsive, as it must be, to loss. Namwali Serpell narrates with an acute awareness of what resists and eludes conventional narration, producing a story that is wonderfully unpredictable, arresting, haunting

Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man

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

If The Old Drift was an epic effort to outdo Marquez and Rushdie, this slippery yet admirably controlled novel aspires to outdo Toni Morrison, and it earns the comparison. It's deeply worthy of rereading and debate. Stylistically refreshing and emotionally intense, cementing Serpell's place among the best writers going

Kirkus

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

Masterful: a blend of self-knowing, sincere and spry... Serpell's sentences are unhurried, yet detailed, smart and brisk

Sunday Telegraph

The Furrows...confirms Serpell's place as one of the most innovative and intelligent writers today

Financial Times

[Serpell captures] the child's-eye perspective with great flair...along with the secrecy and judgement of the adult world

Times Literary Supplement

An endlessly innovative and deeply moving exploration of grief and family

White Review, *Books of the Year*

Highly accomplished

London Review of Books