Small Worlds
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Brought to you by Penguin.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2024
An exhilarating and expansive new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from Caleb Azumah Nelson, the no.1 bestselling, award-winning author of Open Water
The one thing that can solve Stephen's problems is dancing. Dancing at Church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his faith, but he does believe in rhythm. Dancing with his friends, somewhere in a basement with the drums about to drop, while the DJ spins garage cuts. Dancing with his band, making music which speaks not just to the hardships of their lives, but the joys too. Dancing with his best friend Adeline, two-stepping around the living room, crooning and grooving, so close their heads might touch. Dancing alone, at home, to his father's records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known.
Stephen has only ever known himself in song. But what becomes of him when the music fades? When his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice, when his home is no longer his own? How will he find space for himself: a place where he can feel beautiful, a place he might feel free?
Set over the course of three summers in Stephen's life, from London to Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exhilarating and expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves, the worlds we live, dance and love within.
***Praise for Open Water, winner of the Costa First Novel Award, Debut Novel of the Year British Book Award and a #1 Times bestseller***
'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, bestselling author of QUEENIE and PEOPLE PERSON
'A short, poetic and intellectual meditation on art and a relationship between a young couple' Bernardine Evaristo, Booker prize-winning author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
'A lyrical modern love story, brilliant on music and art, race and London life, I enjoyed it hugely' David Nicholls, author of ONE DAY and SWEET SORROW
'A stunning piece of art' Bolu Babalola, bestselling author of LOVE IN COLOUR
© 2023 Caleb Azumah Nelson (P)2023 Penguin Audio
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Small Worlds, the second novel from Caleb Azumah Nelson, is equally as lyrical and poignant as his Costa Prize-winning debut—but those who struggled with Open Water’s second-person perspective may find this first-person narrative a much more readable offering. Nelson returns to South London for three consecutive summers in this emotive exploration of the shaky, uncertain period between adolescence and adulthood, dropping in on Stephen just before prom night in 2010. He is hanging his future hopes on a girl—Adeline, his best friend—jazz, and the music school experience that will mean their burgeoning romance need not be tested by distance and separation. True love’s course is rarely that simple, however, and Stephen’s struggle to carve out a new path when the one he intended to tread comes to an abrupt dead end makes for tender, empathetic reading. His relationship with his father—a first-generation immigrant from Ghana—is key to the conflict Stephen endures as he grows from boy to man, and Nelson renders the cultural gulf between the parents who denied themselves a carefree young adulthood of their own in order to work hard and secure their futures, and the children who know nothing of these experiences, in typically elegant fashion. Even with a backdrop of creeping gentrification, systemic racism and bereavement, Small Worlds is lighter fare than its predecessor and its refreshing to spend time with characters who have not yet seen enough of the world to be hardened and jaded by it just yet. Beautifully, masterfully written.
