Shuggie Bain

'I felt like an outsider my whole life - everything changed when I won the Booker Prize'

Douglas Stuart’s novels are exercises in loving, despite all the hard knocks life throws at his characters. In his works, Stuart fleshes out the love story beyond sickly sweet narratives that verge on fantasy, instead his stories throw their arms around characters often forgotten in literature - the working class, the rural, the queer. In his critically acclaimed debut Shuggie Bain, Stuart chronicles the relationship between a gay son and his mother Agnes, who is suffering with addiction.