Booker Prize-winning author Douglas Stuart says his writing seeks to explore the overlooked lives and experiences that shape Scotland, as he prepares to publish his third novel, John of John, a story centred on family, sexuality, class and inheritance.
The novel follows art graduate John-Calum Macleod, known as Cal, who returns from Edinburgh to his family home on the remote Scottish island of Harris after his father, John, summons him as his grandmother’s health deteriorates. A sheep farmer, weaver and Presbyterian preacher, John is a complex figure whose life forces his son to confront questions of identity, loneliness and family history.
The book developed from Stuart’s visits to the Outer Hebrides, where he spent weeks meeting residents and learning about life in rural communities. Initially intending to write about a son returning home, he became increasingly interested in people who had remained on the islands, including those who had never married and whose experiences were often overlooked.
“I wanted to see Scotland for myself, and I sensed that I wanted to write about loneliness,” Stuart told the Financial Times, explaining how conversations with island residents reshaped the story.
John of John is Stuart’s first novel since Young Mungo, published in 2022, and follows his acclaimed debut, Shuggie Bain, which won the Booker Prize in 2020 and has sold more than two million copies. The new book has already been selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book club.
Giving a voice to overlooked communities
Stuart, 49, said his first two novels drew on personal experiences and explored subjects that were often left unspoken. Shuggie Bain examined addiction and the grief surrounding his mother’s death, while Young Mungo addressed masculinity, violence and the dangers faced by young men.
With his latest work, he has turned his attention to rural Scotland, where depopulation and the dominance of the country’s central belt have helped leave some communities underrepresented in national narratives.
“I write to bring myself home and make sense of my nation,” he said, describing a desire to uncover stories that exist beneath conventional understandings of Scotland.
Although John of John differs from his earlier novels in its setting, it continues Stuart’s exploration of people whose lives and identities are shaped by social expectations and family circumstances.
The author also draws on his own experience of loss. His father died when he was at primary school, and his mother died when he was 16, leaving him without close older relatives to turn to.
He said the absence of an older generation had influenced his interest in what people owe those who raised them, as well as the freedoms and burdens inherited from family.
Class and belonging remain personal questions
Despite his literary success, Stuart said he continued to struggle with how others perceived his working-class background. He described feeling that people outside his social environment often expected him to explain poverty and working-class life.
He also recalled feeling excluded from literary culture while growing up without easy access to books. The critical reception of Scottish writer James Kelman, who won the Booker Prize in 1994, reinforced his sense that working-class voices and vernacular language were not always welcomed by the literary establishment.
Stuart said he had benefited from dedicated teachers who helped him prepare for his school-leaving examinations, but remained concerned about boys’ relationship with reading.
His comments also reflected wider concerns about regional inequality in Britain, including the decline of industry and the condition of public infrastructure beyond London.
A possible change of direction
Stuart, who studied at the Royal College of Art in London before working in fashion design in New York, now lives in the US with his husband.
While Scotland has remained central to his fiction, he suggested that his next novel might take him in a different direction. After 18 years working on stories centred on three Scottish men, he said he was considering a change of subject.
“I might be done writing about Scotland for a while. I feel a change,” he said.
For now, John of John continues Stuart’s effort to illuminate lives often absent from the mainstream narrative, bringing questions of love, faith, sexuality and belonging to the forefront of his work.
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