Author Talk with Derek Owusu

Join us for an author talk with Derek Owusu celebrating the release of his new book 'Recovery House'! Bookseller favourite Derek Owusu will be coming to talk to us all about his new book Recovery House! • Date: Tuesday 22 September • Time: 7pm • Venue: The Writers' Cafe, Sevenoaks Bookshop, 147 High Street, Sevenoaks, TN13 1XJ • Tickets: from £12 'The Recovery House is a work of the soul. It's some of the most earnest, beautiful writing I've come across in years.' Jo Hamya 'I was deeply moved by The Recovery House, how its portrayal of crisis and meaning, faith and human connection is rendered with such precision and immediacy; each vignette feels like a small gift, told in a voice that will linger with me' Sophie Mackintosh 'Derek Owusu is the real deal, and The Recovery House is his best work yet; a brutal, painful, vulnerable book rendered with rare poise and style' Kieran Goddard The Recovery House Jamal, a gifted and introspective young poet, wakes in a quiet, claustrophobic recovery house after a devastating mental breakdown, unsure how the bright edges of his life became so fractured. In this stark yet strangely tender sanctuary, with its watchful nurses, restless corridors and overlooked garden, he encounters several wounded, but radiant souls who are each wrestling with their own invisible storms. As Jamal navigates this suspended world, at once suffocating and strangely sacred, he begins to observe rather than retreat, finding in the rhythms of shared cigarettes, half-finished conversations and midnight confessions a hesitant, flickering sense of belonging. Within these intimate, volatile walls, music drifts like prayer. A song sung into the dark becomes a fragile lifeline. Psalms are read aloud with trembling conviction. Laughter erupts, unexpected and defiant. Jamal's searching, philosophical mind moves restlessly between memory and imagination, literature and scripture, doubt and devotion, interrogating the porous boundaries between illness and inspiration. What does it mean to hear a voice and call it God, or art, or madness? What is salvation in a place built to contain collapse? In the charged silence of the garden, under watchful skies, he begins to sense that joy can exist even here, braided through grief, carried on melody, sustained by human touch. Tender, intelligent and spiritually inquisitive, The Recovery House is a novel about the music that survives inside us when language falters, about the redemptive possibilities of friendship, and about the delicate courage required to rebuild a self. As Jamal reckons with love, faith, shame and the perilous seduction of turning life into art, he is forced to confront the most difficult question of all: how to live honestly in the world without sacrificing the soul that makes him want to write it. Derek Owusu A Granta Best Young British Novelist Derek Owusu is a writer, poet and podcaster from north London. He discovered his passion for literature at the age of twenty-three while studying exercise science at university. Unable to afford a change of degree, Derek began reading voraciously and sneaking into English Literature lectures at the University of Manchester. Derek edited and contributed to Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space. That Reminds Me, his first solo work, won the Desmond Elliott Prize 2020. Derek Owusu photo credit: Josima Senior Some of the ticket options that don’t include the author’s book, or are specially priced for couples, are limited in number and can sell out quickly. Our aim is to try and bring the best and most interesting authors to our town. We are always trying to balance accessibility and affordability for our audiences, alongside requirements from publishers to sell enough books for events to be worthwhile enterprises for their authors.