BFL45 - Douglas Stuart

Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart, (Shuggie Bain, Young Mungo), talks to Max Porter about his latest novel. Set in a tight-knit Hebridean community, John of John examines the weight of family expectation, the compromises made for love, the lies people tell in order to survive and the cost of a life unlived.

Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow but now lives in New York. Shuggie Bain, his first novel, won the Booker Prize and both Debut of the Year and Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. In 2025 it was picked by The Sunday Times as one of the best novels of the 21st century. His second novel, Young Mungo, was a No1 Sunday Times best seller.

Max Porter is the British author of Shy, Grief is the Thing With Feathers and The Death of Francis Bacon. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the 2025 chair of the judges for the International Booker Prize.