Open Water

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Open Water

By: Caleb Azumah Nelson

Narrated by: Caleb Azumah Nelson

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About this listen

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.

City Life

Coming of Age

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Mental Health Awareness

Urban

Heartfelt

Thought-Provoking

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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)

Most relevant

Absolutely beautiful. Full of poetry and rhythm, it reads like music and rap. The quiet voice of the narrator (the author) draws you in and makes it feel like a very intimate experience. This is a book of romance, Black joy, London, sharing drinks and food, generational trauma, and about being seen. I highly recommend this important book.