Caleb Azumah Nelson

Ghanaian author Caleb Azumah Nelson garnered global attention with his startling debut novel, now his second novel explores the life, tastes and music of Ghana.
By Sarah Jones 

Caleb Azumah Nelson is a thought-provoking author who powerfully conveys themes of love, racism and music in his novels. Born in Ghana but raised and still currently living in London, he expresses the difficulties racism can cause in forming relationships whilst also celebrating black creativity.

Nelson’s background in photography allows him a unique capacity to visualise not just locations and imagined events but characters’ emotions, such as the ‘cool and blue and unshifting’ anger that his main character in Open Water addresses as the novel unfolds. This is key to helping a reader fully empathise with the nuances and complexities of his characters’ emotions.  

His first novel, Open Water, won the Costa First Novel Award and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, and was a number-one Times bestseller, among other accolades. It is succinctly described as ‘A love song to Black art and thought’  by Yaa Gyasi, bestselling author of Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom.

Beautifully written with a lyrical quality and repetition of key phrases that seem to form a part of the music of his writing, it explores the blossoming love of a young couple whose happiness is undercut by the threat of racism. This is a shadow which seems to lurk both metaphorically and literally at every corner for the main character, and perhaps why the unusual second person perspective is used throughout, to force the reader to see from a new position. 

The language used to capture the intensity and elusive nature of love feels unique to the characters but also cannot help but conjure an emotive response from the reader. Caleb Azumah Nelson writes: “You are here and you are not. You are on the balcony, you are on the hill, you are in sunshine, you are in darkness, you are in the open air, you are in the basement, you are in perpetual joy, you are eternally sad.”

These overwhelming emotions and flashes of memory are haunting as they touch a chord with our own experiences, but they also foreshadow the danger to come. When the danger arrives, it is shockingly sudden and leaves the reader stunned into reflection. 

Small Worlds, his second novel, was released in May 2023. It explores Stephen’s struggle to find a connection with his father and his own identity, only truly experiencing wholeness when he is dancing. The novel is written in three sections, over consecutive summers, in which he travels from London to Ghana and back again. Memory is once again a key theme of the novel, and how memories change in the remembering of them over time. 

In researching the novel, Nelson himself returned several times to Ghana, and his love of the food, the music and significantly the unique light in Ghana shines through in his writing. Music, this time in the form of dance, is celebrated and indeed in one interview Nelson explains that he always played the piece he was writing about as he wrote. In a touching and uplifting article Nelson wrote for Penguin on the topic of love, he recollects his own parents and how their expressions of love are inextricably connected with music: “Love as the things I’ve always seen: my parents and their late-night gatherings and their slow jams, their Marvin and Teddy and Luther, their off-pitch adlibs and slick two-steps, their small world, their private ecstasy.”

In these flashes of his own childhood, we can see why Nelson writes with such conviction about such powerful themes and why giving a voice to black artists is so important in his work.

Raven Leilani, bestselling author of Luster praises the integrity and attention to detail evident in Nelson’s work: “The rhythms of Small Worlds are a feature of Nelson’s quiet, particular ear and of a profound engagement with music. Nelson writes about closeness, with family, with lovers, with art, as careful, essential labour”.

So what is next? Nelson is now moving on to a third novel, which he describes as the third book in a loose trilogy. Excitingly, he is also involved in writing screen adaptations of his books. With his ear for musicality and his eye for the perfect image, these are sure to be beautifully crafted and thoughtfully constructed.