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From the Booker-prizewinning author of Shuggie Bain, comes an extraordinary, page-turning second novel, a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James.
Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in the hyper-masculine and violently sectarian world of Glasgow's housing estates. They should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they find themselves falling in love, they dream of escaping the grey city, and Mungo works especially hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his elder brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold.
But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable. When Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.
Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in literary fiction, Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.
(Summary provided by the author)
Douglas Stuart is a Scottish - American author and fashion designer. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the 2020 Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It won both the Debut of the Year, and the overall, Book of the Year, at the British Book Awards. Shuggie Bain is to be translated into thirty-eight languages.
In April 2022, he published his second novel, Young Mungo. He is currently at work on new writing.
His short stories, Found Wanting, and The Englishman, were published in The New Yorker magazine. His essay, Poverty, Anxiety, and Gender in Scottish Working-Class Literature was published by Lit Hub.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he has an MA from the Royal College of Art in London and an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. Since 2000, he has lived and worked in New York City, although he spends as much time in Glasgow as he can.
(Biography provided by the author)
