Caleb Azumah Nelson and Sam Riviere among Observer's '10 Best Debut Novelists for 2021'

Congratulations to Caleb Azumah Nelson and Sam Riviere on being picked for the Observer's annual list of '10 Best Debut Novelists'! 

In the UK, Nelson's OPEN WATER is published by Viking on 4th February, and Riviere's DEAD SOULS is forthcoming from Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 13th May. 

Here's what the Observer says about each of these debut novelists:

'Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut is a tender and touching love story, beautifully told. Open Water explores the security and safety that love offers, but also its limitations when set alongside vulnerability triggered by violence, fear and loss. Its nameless young couple are both black artists – he a photographer, she a dancer – and the book conspicuously celebrates black achievement (Yaa Gyasi has called it “a love song to black art and thought”). Musicians such as Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean and Solange feature alongside James Baldwin, Zadie Smith, Teju Cole and many others – painters, film-makers, photographers. The book is also something of a celebration of south-east London, where Azumah Nelson grew up. Azumah Nelson is also a photographer; he inherited a 35mm camera from an uncle, taught himself to use it, and has been working on a series of portraits of “black people in their everyday moments” for a while. But his writing will keep him busy. Last year his story, Pray, was shortlisted for the BBC national short story award and Open Water was the subject of a nine-way bidding auction prior to publication.'

'Sam Riviere is the author of several books of poetry, including Kim Kardashian’s Marriage. He started off as a visual artist, then moved into poetry. He also runs If a Leaf Falls Press, which he describes as a “micropublisher” of avant-garde writing. His first novel, Dead Souls, borrows its title from Gogol, and explores plagiarism, literary celebrity and disgrace. The book tells the story of a night at the bar of a Travelodge hotel in Charing Cross. In sinuous, ornate prose rendered in a single paragraph that stretches over the whole of the novel’s 300-plus pages, the unnamed narrator recounts his meeting with Solomon Wiese, an author whose work has been discredited by a sophisticated piece of plagiarism-detection software. The book is full of clever postmodern flourishes, self-referential winks and riotous set pieces. It’s funny, smart and beautifully written.'

Read more about these novels, and the Observer list, here.