Open Water

By: Caleb Azumah Nelson

Narrated by: Caleb Azumah Nelson

Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021

Winner of Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards 2022

Winner of Bad Form Book of the Year Award.

Number one best seller in The Times.

Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year.

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize 2021.

A National Book Award '5 Under 35' Honoree.

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 respected only for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential debut of recent years.

©2020 Caleb Azumah Nelson (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"A tender and touching love story, beautifully told." (Observer 10 Best Debut Novelists of 2021)

"Hands-down the best debut I've read in years." (The Times) 

"A beautiful and powerful novel about the true and sometimes painful depths of love." (Candice Carty-Williams, best-selling author of Queenie) 

"An unforgettable debut...it's Sally Rooney meets Michaela Coel meets Teju Cole." (New York Times) 

"A love song to Black art and thought." (Yaa Gyasi, best-selling author of Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom) 

beautiful

very beautifully written account of love and life in contemporary London.
Themes of Black masculinity, police oppression, mental health and racism are woven in with a devastatingly light touch. Narration by the author gives the voice authenticity

Moving and original

Deeply moving, this book has themes of love and friendship. It’s set in present day London and is about two friends who fall in love but struggle to stay together. With original prose, the author offers profound insight into what it is like to grow up in the UK when you have black skin. Though harrowing and confronting at times, this perspective is critical to understand if we are to make this world a better place. I particularly loved the way the author describes the moment when two people meet and somehow both just know the course of their lives has irrevocably altered and destiny is unfolding. Moments like those are often difficult to convey in words but this author does it beautifully.

The book is narrated by the author. it’s perhaps not as polished a performance as a professional narrator’s would be - but his voice gives authenticity to the story that really works in this case. It’s a compelling read. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. One of the best books I’ve read this year. What an incredible debut. I can’t wait to read more works by this writer.