Young Mungo

Douglas Stuart

Picador 2022

Young Mungo follows in the footsteps of Shuggie Bain which won the Booker Prize for Scots expat, Douglas Stuart, in 2020. He must have done a good bit of research for the new one since the first one was largely autobiographical. I see by the blurb about Stuart on the sleeve of the new novel that he now divides his time between Glasgow and New York (where he escaped to courtesy of the fashion industry after graduating with a Master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in London) rather than living in New York with the occasional foray to Glasgow. The new enfant terrible of Scottish literature has almost come home.

Duncan MacLaren studied Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow under the guidance of the poet Alexander Scott, the first lecturer in Scottish Literature in the country.