I probably seem quite at ease now saying I’m mixed race, I’m black, I’m Zambian, but for a while that was quite torturous, quite angsty. As a young w… - Namwali Serpell

They were not kings. The empire was a frikkin sham. They were colonialists, and for that you only need brute force – nothing to boast of when you have it. Power’s just an accident that depends on the weakness of others.

I think there was an impulse in me to write women as central to the text. Part of that is my own limitations as a writer: being able to delineate the varieties of female experience is clearly easier for someone who’s lived as a woman, and projecting myself into male characters is harder for me. It’s something I have to really work on…

Now, as her baby wept for hunger and as she herself wept distractedly - weeping was just what she did now, who she was - Matha felt that dawning shock that comes when you look at yourself and see a person you once might have pitied