Rhianna Dhillon in conversation with Irvine Welsh on The Penguin Podcast

Interviews

The Penguin Podcast: Latitude special

An image of author Derek Owusu in the Penguin Podcast studio

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The Penguin Podcast: episode 2 – Black History Month

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Features

‘It was the first time I saw myself in literature’: Penguin authors on the book they wish they read in school

Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon in the Netflix series, The Queen's Gambit. Here Beth is seen looking pensive at a chess board, in the midst of a room of onlookers.

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Reading lists

Books to read if you loved The Queen’s Gambit

Borderline Fiction

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Loneliness means you don’t have to disappoint anyone until you develop the habit of talking to yourself 
 
At nineteen, Marcus is young and in love … again. When his latest crush, Adwoa, starts showing him true affection, Marcus is ready to reconsider his lifestyle – the drugs, the casual encounters. At least for a little while. 
 
Now, before he knows it, Marcus is twenty-five. And history risks repeating itself. 
 
Told through two parallel narratives – one past, one present – Borderline Fiction is a highly original and deeply affecting contemporary tale written with an intensity of emotion and vulnerability. The novel is a close-up, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes funny examination of what it means to be a young black man navigating today’s world. 
 
Tortured, beautiful, anxious and poetic, Borderline Fiction is a memorable glimpse into the inner world of a young man searching for an authentic way to love and be loved. 
 
‘Glaringly fresh and true’ COURTTIA NEWLAND 
‘Full of originality and raw, pure, gutsy talent’ CHRISTIE WATSON 
‘Masterful’ TROY ONYANGO 
 
© Derek Owusu 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

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.

Hunger Pains

A Quick Reads story from the author of That Reminds Me and Borderline Fiction 
FROM GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST AND WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOT PRIZERay wants the perfect body. 
 
But how far is too far? 
 
When his training turns extreme, Ray is pulled into a dark gym culture that promises results at any cost. As his body changes, so does his mind. Watching from the side lines is his girlfriend Temi, a journalist who expresses concern but has her own secret agenda. 
 
Hunger Pains is a gripping story about obsession, control, and what happens when self-improvement becomes self-destruction. 
 
Praise for Derek Owusu: 
'Owusu can find humour in the bleakest places, taking you on an emotional rollercoaster and constantly challenging how you feel about a place meant to heal' Daniel Lawrence Taylor 
'Derek Owusu is the real deal' Keiran Goddard'Derek Owusu's writing is honest, moving, delicate, but tough. Once you lock on to his words, it is hard to break eye contact' Benjamin Zephaniah

A Quick Reads story from the author of That Reminds Me and Borderline Fiction 
FROM GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST AND WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOT PRIZERay wants the perfect body. 
 
But how far is too far? 
 
When his training turns extreme, Ray is pulled into a dark gym culture that promises results at any cost. As his body changes, so does his mind. Watching from the side lines is his girlfriend Temi, a journalist who expresses concern but has her own secret agenda. 
 
Hunger Pains is a gripping story about obsession, control, and what happens when self-improvement becomes self-destruction. 
 
Praise for Derek Owusu:'Owusu can find humour in the bleakest places, taking you on an emotional rollercoaster and constantly challenging how you feel about a place meant to heal' Daniel Lawrence Taylor'Derek Owusu is the real deal' Keiran Goddard 
 
'Derek Owusu's writing is honest, moving, delicate, but tough. Once you lock on to his words, it is hard to break eye contact' Benjamin Zephaniah

Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2020

That Reminds Me

A beautiful, brutal and breathtaking novel-in-verse from one of the brightest young British writers of today.

A dreamy, impressionistic offeringof reassembled fragments of memories emerging through the misty beauty of a deliciously individualistic poetic sensibility with flashes of Twi and UK London ebonics to further remind us of what has been missing from British poetry... I can't tell you how impressed I was and how much I enjoyed reading this stunning book.

Bernadine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other

When writing is this honest, it soars. I think that this is why the words in this collection fly around you and settle, as they have. What an incredible use of language and truth. Hope this reaches all the mandem. We need more.

These are words that come from the heart, the lived life and owned observations. Powerful and moving. Social realism at its best.

I hate Derek Owusu for the same reasons I love him: he is the sort of writer who makes me and other writers have doubts about whether we belong in this art. He is one of a kind. Truly a precious stone of a poet. His words evoke flawless empathy and leave me with either a strained face from smiling or a wet page from crying. I consider myself enlightened, lucky, intimidated and gripped when I read his words.

Derek Owusu’s writing is honest, moving, delicate, but tough. Once you lock on to his words, it is hard to break eye contact. A beautiful meditation on childhood, coming of age, the now, and the media. This work is heartfelt.

That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu reads like an open wound. The prose runs like a pulse, builds like the beat of some lowercase drum. Honest and beautiful.

Guy Gunaratne, author of In Our Mad and Furious City

That Reminds Me is heartbreaking, important and original. Derek Owusu's words are precious scars.

Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness

Owusu’s work is a much-needed contribution to literature. His work is profoundly tender, often wry and always sharply observed. He grants us a rare, nuanced glimpse into the world of a vulnerable young black man, negotiating his identity in a complex and difficult world.

Honest, insightful, and woven together in a narrative that will undoubtedly change lives.

That Reminds Me is extraordinary. It’s a complex, emotional story – intimately told. Every word is used to great effect, and the images Derek evokes are simply stunning. It is unique, original and so very beautiful. I enjoyed this book very much.

This book was gripping and an emotional rollercoaster. One that we could not put down.

Derek Owusu's voice is originally poetical and profoundly authentic. That Reminds Me is an addictive and painful delight, full of familiar bruises I don't know how I got but couldn't stop pressing.

It's a tough read that rewards a thousand times. I love the fragmentary form and the sense of beauty that builds throughout. So raw, tender and transporting.

A fresh and powerful debut... within contemporary British literature it is still uncommon to find these ideas about the brittleness of identity considered from the perspective of young black male characters. It is equally rare to find these concerns handled so unflinchingly... When the writing operates in this highly focused mode, as Owusu engages with the concrete minutiae of lived reality, That Reminds Me is especially powerful. K’s mother works as a cleaner at a local school, and his musings on her attitude to her job – “she is so attentive to the floor, like wiping food from her child’s face” – are expressed with real tenderness. A simple moment when the grown-up K gives a young black boy in the street coins so he can buy sweets like his white friends is revelatory... There is a palpable charge and welcome freshness to the voice here that is undeniable.

A searing and beautifully written exploration of identity, belonging, addiction, sexuality, violence, family and religion.

A moving, semi-autobiographical story about a vulnerable black man - a one-off. The story's most touching moments are about compassion and are never oversold... The sense is of suffering making room for empathetic insight. This book is brave and moving... Owusu writes with an enlightening fluency.

If you want to see what the policies from Whitehall that keep the working classes struggling look like in human guise, when placed in an environment where their identities have to be negotiated daily, That Reminds Me is the viewfinder you need. It’s post-Thatcher reality in the inner city, clouded over by racism, infused with West African stoicism, narrated by a voice that has known something different. It’s life as a growing boy experiences it, with a powerless wonder; it’s messy and beautiful, fractured but eloquent. K’s story reminds us that our scars should not strip us of our dignity.

In weaving emotion into literary gold, truth has never been this painfully told, or this beautiful.

A fast-paces, dense, poetic, original and bewitching story by an important new writer. That Reminds Me will long be remembered by readers.

Deserves the same recognition that greeted Max Porter's similarly constructed fictionalised memoir Grief is the Thing With Feathers... uses its broken-up style to explore experiences that defy easy comprehension. There is nothing indulgent about this quietly observed account of a black man Owusu gives the name of K... There is a physicality to his writing, the impression of incoherent feelings being wrestled into shape, that lends his book heft. K's future is, in the end, ambiguous, but Owusu's surely gleams bright.

A bold prose poem written in novella form, That Reminds Me is one of the most powerful pieces of writing to be published in 2019.

The latest release from Stormzy's increasingly impressive #Merky imprint, this is a stylistically ambitious memoir of a precarious Tottenham upbringing. Owusu writes with a poet's gift for seemingly incidental observation in a potent story that's left deliberately, troublingly fragmented.

A virtuosic debut by a raw new talent. An honest and timely evaluation of a black man's struggle to belong and later come to terms with failing mental health. Utterly convincing and deeply sad, Owusu's storytelling will bring readers to tears.

Derek Owusu is not just a brilliant writer, he’s a deep thinker. Anything he does is relevant, and meaningful. It would be easy to say that he is mainly concerned with the condition of young black men, but in truth he speaks truth to all of us.

Written with candour and verve, and full of moments of heart-stopping anguish and beauty.

WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2020 
___________________________________ 
'A singular achievement.' 
Michael Donkor, Guardian 
 
'Heartbreaking, important and original.' 
 Christie Watson, author of THE LANGUAGE OF KINDNESS 
 
'Derek Owusu's writing is honest, moving, delicate, but tough. Once you lock on to his words, it is hard to break eye contact. A beautiful meditation on childhood, coming of age, the now, and the media. This work is heartfelt.' 
 Benjamin Zephaniah 
 
 'Honest and beautiful.' 
 Guy Gunaratne, author of IN OUR MAD AND FURIOUS CITY 
 
 'When writing is this honest, it soars. What an incredible use of language and truth.' 
 Yrsa Daley-Ward 
___________________________________ 
Anansi, your four gifts raised to nyame granted you no power over the stories I tell... 
 
This is the story of K. 
 
K is sent into care before a year marks his birth. He grows up in fields and woods, and he is happy, he thinks. When K is eleven, the city reclaims him. He returns to an unknown mother and a part-time father, trading the fields for flats and a community that is alien to him. Slowly, he finds friends. Eventually, he finds love. He learns how to navigate the city. But as he grows, he begins to realise that he needs more than the city can provide. He is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart 
 
That Reminds Me is the story of one young man, from birth to adulthood, told in fragments of memory. It explores questions of identity, belonging, addiction, sexuality, violence, family and religion. It is a deeply moving and completely original work of literature from one of the brightest British writers of today.

Derek Owusu

What a beautiful book, it’s like a hug, or a gentle holding of a hand

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

There are writers who both survive things and understand them. Brutal, precise, and somehow full of light.

Truly, I think the business of blurbing isn't fit to do this book justice...The Recovery House is a work of the soul. It's some of the most earnest, beautiful writing I've come across in years - I feel lucky to have read it, and deeply inspired.

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

I’ll hold up my hands and say it, I thought Owusu had written his masterwork already, I even wrote as much, but in this latest novel he homes in on everything that makes his writing so rich, emotional and wise, distilling it all into a finely textured work of tenderness, love, camaraderie and human resilience. We’re held securely in his palm for the duration of these scant pages. This is tender restraint charged with love and compassion. This is our uncharted humanity turned to face the world. This is truly us.

I would like to call The Recovery House a masterclass in storytelling, voice and what a novel should be, but this kind of talent can’t be taught. I was mesmerised from start to finish... I’ve never read anything like it and I don’t think I ever will. The Recovery House is perfect - it doesn’t beg you to feel anything but you feel it all regardless. The characters are real living people to whom you find yourself attached, The Recovery House itself is all around, the doors and chairs and tables all physical things you can reach out and touch - all possible because Derek Owusu has created a story that is impossible to read without living within it, impossible to put down without reaching out for it again and impossible to forget without realising that it’s like nothing else you’ll ever read, because it’s the best thing you’ve ever read

The Recovery House starts as an arresting, nuanced portrait of an artist in crisis, and ends as a finely wrought exploration of how we create meaning in the darkest periods of our lives. I loved it

In THE RECOVERY HOUSE, Derek Owusu writes movingly about attention as a form of devotion, about bearing witness as a mode of care. I loved this beautiful book that explores the ways reading and writing make and unmake us

The Recovery House is something real, a delicate slice of life that is gracious enough to let us into the private world of a mental health facility and meet the folks who reside there. Written with an agile rhythm and refreshing honesty, it holds its characters with tender care and trusts us to hold them too. An impressively vulnerable novel - I read it in one sitting and immediately went back to page one to read it again

A prescient novel, which captures very powerfully the surreal space and mundane routines of an institution. Owusu has drawn that desolate situation so poignantly, the peace and protection of the institution weighted against the mundanity and suffocation, and then made these illuminating connections throughout with the seclusion of religious life, the comfort of religious rituals.

I wolfed this book down in one sitting. Formally playful in a way that’s both irritatingly clever and unsettlingly beautiful, The Recovery House is brimming with tenderness.

The unpunctuated prose pulls you straight into the character’s stream of consciousness, where everyday moments sit alongside the harsh realities of the recovery house. Owusu can find humour in the bleakest places, taking you on an emotional rollercoaster and constantly challenging how you feel about a place meant to heal. A compelling and deeply engaging read

'What a beautiful book, it’s like a hug, or a gentle holding of a hand' MICHAELA COEL'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 
'So rich, emotional and wise, distilling it all into a finely textured work of tenderness, love, camaraderie and human resilience.' COURTTIA NEWLAND 
'I was deeply moved... each vignette feels like a small gift, told in a voice that will linger with me' SOPHIE MACKINTOSH 
'There are writers who both survive things and understand them. Brutal, precise, and somehow full of light.' YRSA DALEY-WARD 
'I loved this beautiful book' SARAH BERNSTEIN 
'A compelling and deeply engaging read' DANIEL LAWRENCE TAYLOR 
'I loved it’ KRYSTELLE BAMFORD 
'The Recovery House is a masterclass in storytelling. I was mesmerised from start to finish… I’ve never read anything like it and I don’t think I ever will. The Recovery House is perfect' ORE AGBAJE-WILLIAMS 
'A prescient novel, which captures very powerfully the surreal space and mundane routines of an institution. Owusu has drawn that desolate situation so poignantly' SARA BAUME 
'An impressively vulnerable novel - I read it in one sitting and immediately went back to page one to read it again' VARAIDZO 
'Derek Owusu is the real deal, and The Recovery House is his best work yet' KEIRAN GODDARD 
'The Recovery House is brimming with tenderness' ROZIE KELLY 
 
A Granta Best Young British Novelist 
 
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

Praise for The Recovery House

What a beautiful book, it’s like a hug, or a gentle holding of a hand

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 ...

There are writers who both survive things and understand them. Brutal, precise, and somehow full of light.

What a beautiful book, it’s like a hug, or a gentle holding of a hand

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 ...

There are writers who both survive things and understand them. Brutal, precise, and somehow full of light.

What a beautiful book, it’s like a hug, or a gentle holding of a hand

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 ...

There are writers who both survive things and understand them. Brutal, precise, and somehow full of light.

Books by Derek Owusu

Articles featuring Derek Owusu

The Penguin Podcast: Latitude special

The Penguin Podcast: episode 2 – Black History Month

‘It was the first time I saw myself in literature’: Penguin authors on the book they wish they read in school

Books to read if you loved The Queen’s Gambit

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