A tender and emotionally complex debut about the relationship between two young Black British artists, Open Water shines a light on the ways love and race can be interlinked in modern society.
Shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2021
Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for February 2022
Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2022.
Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021
Winner of The British Book Awards 2022 Debut Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2021
A stunning, shattering debut novel about two Black British artists falling in and out of love.
Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists - he a photographer, she a dancer - trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.
At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241448786
Number of pages: 160
Weight: 151 g
Dimensions: 197 x 129 x 12 mm
Open Water is a beautifully, delicately written novel about love, for self and others, about being seen, about vulnerability and mental health. Sentence by sentence, it oozes longing and grace. Caleb is a star in the making. - Nikesh Shukla, editor of THE GOOD IMMIGRANT and author of BROWN BABY
For those that are missing the tentative depiction of love in Normal People, Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water is set to become one of 2021's unmissable books. Utterly transporting, it'll leave you weeping and in awe. - Stylist
An exhilarating new voice in British fiction - Vogue
A short, sharp poetic burst of a novel; it crystallises the torments and heat of young love brilliantly - Andrew McMillan, award-winning author of PHYSICAL
This is a stunning short novel about a story of falling in love containing not only the happy and delirious parts but the gritty, painful and destructive sections also.
Caleb Azumah Nelson’s novel is hailed as the...
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Thank you to the publishers for this early review copy.
This was my 230th read of 2020 and so far the best book I have read this year, I am clearly going to have to recommend everyone reads this!
So do please pre...
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This is an amazing debut novel about what it means to be young, Black and British in today's society. He is a photographer, she is a dancer, and they fall in and out of love.
The poetic writing explores racism,...
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