A QUESTION OF IDENTITY

Derek Owusu, whose debut novel, That Reminds Me won the 2020 Desmond Elliott Prize, has revealed that he has more than once been asked for ID when offering to sign copies of his own work in a bookshop. Speaking to

The Bookseller in January, he explained, ‘Sometimes when

I’m just around a Waterstones I will walk in and ask if I can sign copies for them. Normally they say “wow, yes please” and hand me a sharpie and I sign away. ‘Foyles Charing Cross asked for ID, so

I just opened the book up to the [author photo] and said “well look, it’s me”. In my head I tried to rationalise it — I mean it makes sense, you should make sure it’s the author. But then again who is really going to go into a bookshop and sign a book by another author? It’s not like I just walked in and started scribbling in the book.’

The writer, who ironically is also the editor of Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space went on to say: ‘Yesterday I was at Waterstones in Covent Garden, I was buying a book for myself, then I saw one of my books on the shelf, so I thought I’d ask if it was okay to sign a couple. When I went up to the till the bookseller looked at me and said “yeah, sure have you got any ID?”

‘There was a woman next to him who looked really uncomfortable, so then I felt uncomfortable. It suddenly clicked — this is kind of strange I keep getting asked this. So I pulled out my driving licence and showed my ID, he checked it and said “that’s fine” — even though the name on my driving licence isn’t even Derek Owusu.

‘I was feeling really bad about the whole thing. So I asked him is it normal that people come in and sign books that don’t belong to them? He replied “no, but in theory it could happen”.

‘Really strange. I was dancing around what I knew just happened. Really odd. It’s a frustrating thing to happen, I’m just really perplexed about it.’

Waterstones has since issued an apology for what really is difficult to interpret as anything other than racism.