Chaotic conditions in Peckham: brolly-ruining wind, sudden showers, one of those afternoons when the weather apps show every symbol from sunshine to lightning and leave you to figure it out. Caleb Azumah Nelson, the 29-year-old author and artist whose prose and photographs tend to document life in south London, was meant to be showing me around today. We might have swung by the Peckhamplex cinema, the public library off Rye Lane, maybe getting as far as Morley’s burger bar to the south or Bagel King further north – all of which places Nelson has written about in his beautiful second novel, Small Worlds, a follow-up to 2021’s Open Water, which won the Costa first novel award.
Instead of roaming, as planned, we’re taking shelter from heavy rain under an awning outside Peckham Rye station. Nelson recently spent eight weeks on a writers’ retreat in north-east America. “There was a polar vortex or something,” he says. “It was minus 40. Balaclava weather. My eyelashes actually froze together.” Today’s grey city rain is no great hardship by comparison. We set out to find a cafe he likes on Rye Lane, fighting with our umbrellas all the way.
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