'The ideal doorstopper to occupy long, dark evenings’

She was just so aware of everyday people, and when I read her first book, Light a Penny Candle, I swore I knew every character in the book. I have read and re-read most of her books. I could not pick one, just all Maeve Binchy. She helps me switch off!

The Altruists, Andrew Ridker’s intelligent, funny and remarkably assured first novel… [establishes him] as a big, promising talent… Ridker’s ambitious blend of global perspective and intimate human comedy seems likely to evoke comparisons to the work of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill.

[A] smart novel with an impressive balance between satire and heart.

This is a smart, knowing, tender first novel, full of immaculate comic timing and loquacious chutzpah.

An incisive inquiry into the point at which self-interest ends and compassion begins.

With a sharp eye for the absurdities of contemporary American culture… The Altruists boasts numerous charms, ranging from worthy ethical issues treated with an effective wryness to its rare, fond celebration of steamy St. Louis. Its ending is well-earned, and so are its life lessons, adding up to an unusually promising debut.

This tragicomedy wittily explores old wounds, new grievances and hard-won wisdom.

A widowed father and his adult children find their way after years of getting on one another's nerves. With prickly, strangely endearing characters and sharp writing, this novel is tender and hilarious.

Tragedy begets comedy in Ridker's strikingly assured debut about a family undone by grief... Ridker spins delicate moral dilemmas in a novel that grows more complex and more uproarious by the page, culminating in an unforgettable climax.

With humor and warmth, Ridker explores the meaning of family and its inevitable baggage. The Altruists may not paint the prettiest picture, but it's a relatable, unforgettable view of regular people making mistakes and somehow finding their way back to each other.

The ending leaves one gasping… told with great honesty and sensitivity.

Ridker’s smashing debut follows the travails of the middle-class Jewish Alter family in their quest to discover how to be moral. Ridker tells his tale with humor, insight, and depth, making this a novel that will resonate with readers.

Beautifully written, with witty, pitch-perfect dialogue and fascinating characters, Ridker's impressive, deeply satisfying debut is an extraordinarily insightful look at a family broken apart by loss and struggling to find a way back to each other and themselves.

Ridker meticulously peels away the scabs that have grown over the wounds of the [Alter family]... with compassion and piercing wit... A painfully honest, but tender, examination of how love goes awry in the places it should flourish.

One of those super-brilliant, super-funny novels one enjoys in the manner of a squirrel with an especially delicious acorn. I found myself trying to get out of every activity and responsibility just to come back to this novel.

It’s frankly a little unfair that a writer so young should be this talented.

This book will inspire readers to sacrifice comfort and find meaning—Turn off (the comfort), Tune out (the babble of groupthink), Drop in (to duty and responsibility)—or else! Thank you to Andrew Ridker for this excellent debut novel. It is culturally significant and a sign of the times.

The Altruists is a superb exploration of isolation, loneliness, and infidelity – in the broadest, most interesting application of the word. Every chapter is crafted with the care of a perfect short story, and the characters within it are so fully formed I could almost feel their breathing. How tremendous (and a little annoying) that a novel this striking could come from a writer so young.

Andrew Ridker’s expansive, big-hearted debut novel The Altruists is a hilarious and moving portrait of family, and a page-turning investigation of the blurry lines between right, wrong, and selfish.

The Altruists is as rich and generous as the title suggests – a boisterous, funny, real-damn-smart novel about the agonies of family secrets and guilt. Andrew Ridker has got it all – magnetic style, oceans of intellect, and true affection for his hilariously neurotic characters. This book will have you doubled over and crying every sort of tear.

Ridker's debut is at once humorous and poignant.

Eloquent… style and smooth pacing.

Comedy ahoy!

Ridker handles the tussle between parent and children with humour and psychological insight… He is a sure comic talent, witty and engaged, and alive to the legion of competing and irreconcilable roles from which the individual today must self-consciously choose.

Full of magic, history, and humor, The Old Drift will be unlike anything you’ve ever read

Serpell expertly weaves in a preponderance of themes, issues, and history, including Zambia’s independence, the AIDS epidemic, white supremacy, patriarchy, familial legacy, and the infinite variations of lust and love. Recalling the work of Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez as a sometimes magical, sometimes horrifically real portrait of a place, Serpell’s novel goes into the future of the 2020s, when the various plot threads come together in a startling conclusion. Intricately imagined, brilliantly constructed, and staggering in its scope, this is an astonishing novel

Namwali Serpell’s spellbinding debut is worth the investment

The Old Drift is an astounding novel… inventive and powerful–it is also surprisingly funny and plays brilliantly with language… beautiful, rewarding and thought-provoking

An original, poetic novel from an already award-winning writer is one of the year’s most anticipated debuts

An impressive book that demands your attention, and rewards your commitment with a beautifully told, richly evocative tale

Comparisons with Gabriel García Márquez are inevitable and likely warranted. But this novel's generous spirit, sensory richness, and visionary heft make it almost unique among magical realist epics

A mastery of language, a deftness in description, and a dip into surrealist and speculative elements makes The Old Drift a worthwhile study in holding together several storylines through the characterization of those searching for their calling, and the cost of those pursuits

This inventive first novel by Serpell, a Caine Prize winner, spans two centuries in Zambian history, mixing styles from Gothic to Afrofuturist

I recommend Namwali Serpell's 2019 Zambian tour de force The Old Drift. This is a long book – all 563 pages of it – by a writer whose prose and outsize imagination will hold you spellbound throughout

A tremendous novel, completely hypnotising

I loved Namwali Serpell's novel The Old Drift, a shimmering, shape-shifting epic of Zambia written over twenty years