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How long does it take to read Open Water?

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson takes about 2 hours 56 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 2 hours 56 minutes

An evening's read

First published 2021. 160 pages, about 44,000 words.

6 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 4 hours 53 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 2 hours 56 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 1 hour 50 minutes

The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

"In a crowded London pub, two young people meet. 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--and both are trying to make their mark in a world 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, and over the course of a year they find their relationship tested by forces beyond their control. Narrated with deep intimacy, Open Water is at once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity that 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 only respected for strength; to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, and blistering emotional intelligence, Caleb Azumah Nelson gives a profoundly sensitive portrait of romantic love in all its feverish waves and comforting beauty. This is one of the most essential debut novels of recent years, heralding the arrival of a stellar and prodigious young talent"--

Subjects: London (england), fiction, Fiction, romance, contemporary, Fiction, cultural heritage, Blacks, fiction, Photographers, fiction, Black people

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