US President Barack Obama and his daughters Malia and Sasha bought Irish writer Colm Tóibín’s latest novel Nora Webster amongst a number of other purchases in a Washington DC store.
The American president has been known to have had the work of Tóibín on his bed-side table prior to yesterday's (November 29) acquisition.
Obama, who has written three books himself, went on the shopping trip as part of a promotional initiative for so-called Small Business Saturday.
The Obamas also bought the The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan, which won this year’s Man Booker Prize and the classic Joseph Conrad novel, Heart of Darkness, which was the inspiration for the movie Apocalypse Now.
Their shopping basket also contained Being Mortal - a best-selling book on medicine by Atul Gawande; Jacqueline Woodson’s National Book Award-winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming; Denis Johnson’s post-9/11 novel The Laughing Monsters and three books by Brian Jacques.
Colm Tóibín is the subject of Imagine... Colm Tóibín: His Mother's Son which goes out on BBC One, at 11.35pm, on Tuesday, December 2.
Barack Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha
