Open Water

In Open Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson explores the complexities of race, masculinity, and identity through the experiences of two Black British artists in London. The novel is a tender and touching love story that explores the true and sometimes painful depths of love.

Format: Hardback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 04 February 2021
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021, Winner of the Debut Novel of the Year at the British Book Awards 2022, and Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Open Water is a tender and touching love story, beautifully told. Set in South East London, the novel follows two young Black British people, both of whom won scholarships to private schools and struggled to belong. They meet at a pub and fall in love, but are 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. Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years, a love song to Black art and thought.

Yaa Gyasi, bestselling author of Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom, praised Open Water as an amazing debut novel. Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other, described it as a very touching and poetic meditation on art and a relationship between a young couple.

Open Water is a must-read for anyone who loves a tender and touching love story, and a powerful insight into race and masculinity. Caleb Azumah Nelson is a talented writer who is sure to make a name for himself in the literary world.

Weight: 232g
Dimension: 137 x 205 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780241448779