Open Water

Caleb Azumah Nelson Penguin, £8.99

This confident and poetic novella, winner of the Costa

First Novel Award, explores the relationship between two young black artists and shows all the faces of love, from the happy and carefree to the gritty and sometimes painful.

It also explores masculinity, police brutality, mental health, race and the characters’ exhaustion at the battles they face. Intense and poetic, it’s a small but mighty debut.