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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.

©2020 Caleb Azumah Nelson (P)2020 Penguin Audio City Life Coming of Age Genre Fiction Indigenous Creators Mental Health Awareness Urban

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)

All stars
Most relevant
I mean, the author is narrating; he can do what he wants right? But there is lightness and buoyancy and different pacing in the writing. The narration is dour and only dour. I've had to give up and will try the book.

I'm sure the novel is brilliant

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Can't get over the vulnerability in this book. I listened twice consecutively. Loved it, it made me blush, it broke my heart

Brilliant

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just,adored it, the story, the nuances, the riffs, the references , the postcodes!
eloquently written, seductively read.

wonderful

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I found theI found the story quite boring and the narration even more so. The romance I could relate to, but it was all a bit whiny and annoying.

Don’t get the love

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Beautiful writing, beautiful narration. Not only is it the first time I’m writing a review, but it’s also the first time I have finished an audiobook in one sitting. I was swept away by Caleb Azumah Nelson’s words, and his excellent delivery of them. This book touched my soul, I highly recommend you listen to it, read it, just get it. Just, wow.

This was so beautiful, I had to write my first review.

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