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

Urban

Heartfelt

Thought-Provoking

Listeners also enjoyed...

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

I am swooned, I am moved, I am sad, I am happy, I am emotional, I basically felt everything listening to this book.

Open Water is written in a second person perspective and it's the story about two friends falling in love. I don't know the name of "You", but I don't need to. I still connected, empathised and rooted for him.

But, this isn't just a love story. This also focus on the struggles, the experience, grief and trauma of a young black man in British society.

Caleb talks about racism, discrimination, violence, trauma, grief, police violence...

It's about: "It's one thing being looked at and another to be seen".

The rhythm is just perfect! It's poetry, lyrical, it's art!
There are ao many good quotes, that I had to stop and go search for them. This will probably be the first book that I'll annotate, when I have the physical copy.

"“What you’re trying to say is that it’s easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability. Not better, but easier. However the longer you hold it in, the more likely you are to suffocate. At some point, you must breathe.”

"You hide your whole self away because sometimes you forget you haven’t done anything wrong. Sometimes you forget there’s nothing in your pocket. Sometimes you forget that to be you is to be unseen and unheard, or it is to be seen and heard in ways you did not ask for. Sometimes you forget to be you is to be a Black body, and not much else."

I listened to the audiobook and just fell in love with Caleb's voice. I am pleased that I listened to the audio, I believe it was an overall better experience. Now...am I buying the physical copy? Absolutely!
Am I reading his other book? You can bet on it...I'll probably listen to the audio, as well.

Phenomenal