a b c d Shaffi, Sarah; Vincent, Alice (11 January 2021). "2021 debuts: get to know our new authors". Penguin Publishing Group. Archived from the original on 12 August 2021 . Retrieved 7 January 2022. Traditional Jewish accounts [ edit ] Traditional tomb of Caleb, Kifl Haris, one candidate for biblical Timnat Serah Here’s the thing, though: Caleb won’t just accept any contract. He and his team thoroughly vet each and every prospective mark to make sure they deserve to be punished. An amazing debut novel. You should read this book. Let's hear it for Caleb Azumah Nelson, also known as the future' Benjamin Zephaniah

a b Donkor, Michael (19 February 2021). "Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson review – an exciting, ambitious debut". the Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022 . Retrieved 7 January 2022. Caleb Lambert kills people for a living. The money is nice, but it comes a distant second to his primary reason for choosing such a vocation: Caleb often calls it “scratching an itch.” Traditional Jewish sources record a number of stories about Caleb which expand on the biblical account. Caleb Lambert kills people for a living. The money is nice, but it comes a distant second to his primary reason for choosing such a Caleb often calls it “scratching an itch.”Friend, I hope by looking again at Caleb’s life, you are able to see these lessons are vital ones no matter what age you are or in what season you find yourself. It is Azumah Nelson’s expressive style that most startlingly reanimates this formula. His presentation of the narrative in sensual but precisely paced sentences with elegant refrains and motifs imbues Open Water with a rhythm of its own. Azumah Nelson’s descriptions of his lovers’ physicality provide the clearest examples of his supple prose. At the beginning of their relationship, the photographer and dancer are tentative in their interactions with one another – and yet these moments are freighted with possibility. Such acts, he says, “are moments in which we fail each other, and I don’t think that’s happened on its own. It’s directly influenced by state violence, whether that be the government making it harder for marginalised communities, or police stop-and-searching someone yet again, and that person not knowing where to put the anger and reaching for the person closest to them.” Joshua 14:6 reads in reference to Caleb: “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me .”

At the heart of the novel is a love affair between a young couple – he a photographer, she a dancer – which repeatedly runs up against the man’s inability to process his anger about the injustice and violence he sees all around him. “When I was writing, I wasn’t conscious that I was trying to understand and sort through this idea of masculinity,” he says. “I was exploring two people who were trying to be as honest as they could with each other. And I think so often in love, men aren’t necessarily dishonest, but they don’t know how to express the whole truth.”

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and a son of his and Miriam’s was the famous Chur, also one of the leaders of the Jews in the desert. The Hard Worker Nygaard, Mads (29 October 2021). "Awards: Kirkus Winners; Waterstones Book of the Year Shortlist". Shelf Awareness. Archived from the original on 19 November 2021 . Retrieved 7 January 2022. Azumah Nelson continued, "There’s a level of vulnerability which love demands. To ask someone to see you is to ask someone to see all of you and trusting someone with all of you can be difficult. To see all this beauty and rhythm and joy but also to see your uglier parts, your pain, your grief. But it’s wonderful when it does happen, when you are no longer being looked at, but being seen.” [1] While an elegance of style is a hallmark of Azumah Nelson’s storytelling, there is bold risk-taking in his choices too: he writes in the second person, using its immediacy and potency to create an emotional intensity that replicates the emotional intensity with which the protagonist experiences his bond with the dancer and his wider world. The fissures that emerge in their relationship partly arise because he struggles to communicate the depth of his suffering and feelings of loss prompted by the racialised inequities of his south-east London neighbourhood.