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LONDON – Scottish writer Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize for fiction on Thursday for “Shuggie Bain,” a novel about a boy’s troubled maturity in difficult 1980s Glasgow that was rejected by 32 publishers before being picked up.
Stuart, 44, won the prestigious £ 50,000 ($ 66,000) prize for his first published novel, the product of a decade of work. He was the only UK-born author on a US-dominated list of six finalists for the award, which is open to English-language novels from around the world.
Stuart, a former New York-based fashion designer, drew on his own experiences growing up as a homosexual in the financially devastated Glasgow of the Thatcher era for the story of the young Shuggie and his relationship with his alcoholic mother, Agnes. Stuart dedicated the book to his own mother, who died when he was 16 years old.
“My mother is on every page of this book, and without her I wouldn’t be here and my work wouldn’t be here,” said Stuart, who declared himself “absolutely stunned” to win.
The novel’s scope, vivid characters, and unwavering look at poverty have been compared to the work of Charles Dickens, but Stuart said it was repeatedly rejected before being published by Grove Atlantic in the United States and Picador in the United Kingdom. .
Stuart told reporters after his victory that publishers praised his book but “didn’t know how to connect him with readers.
“Working-class Scotland was difficult for them,” Stuart said. He said his victory is a sign that “we are beginning to listen and be able to respect diverse voices.”
Editor and publisher Margaret Busby, who chaired the judging panel, said “Shuggie Bain” was intimate and passionate, challenging but hopeful in his exploration of Shuggie’s burgeoning sexuality and the complex but loving relationship between mother and son.
“It’s hard to get out of that book without thinking ‘this is going to be a classic,'” he said.
In contrast to last year, when stalled judges split the award between Canada’s Margaret Atwood for “The Testaments” and Britain’s Bernardine Evaristo for “Girl, Woman, Other,” this year’s decision was swift and unanimous.
Busby said there were “no tantrums” among the judges, which included poet Lemn Sissay and suspense writer Lee Child.
Stuart was chosen from a shortlist dominated by American writers of various backgrounds. American contenders included Maaza Mengiste’s “The Shadow King”; Diane Cook’s dystopian tale “The New Wilderness”; Avni Doshi’s mother and daughter tale set in India “Burnt Sugar”; and Brandon Taylor’s campus novel “Real Life,” which explores racism and homophobia in academia. The other contender was “This Mournable Body” by Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga.
Although there have been many British Booker Prize winners, most of them English, Stuart is the first Scottish winner since James Kelman took home the 1994 award with “How Late Was It, How Late,” a book that Stuart has called inspiration.
Busby said nationality did not influence the judges’ considerations.
“We were awarding the book,” he said. “We weren’t trying to check boxes or think what people were going to say about us choosing this and not that.”
The coronavirus pandemic shattered Booker’s traditional gala dinner at London’s medieval Guildhall. Instead, the winner’s announcement was broadcast online and on radio from London’s Roundhouse art venue, with virtual appearances from Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and former US President Barack Obama.
In a video message, Obama praised the power of fiction “to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, understand their struggles, and imagine new ways of tackling complex problems and effecting change.”
The Booker Award generally gives the winner a big boost in sales and profile, and often sparks a debate about the state of the English-language literary scene.
This year’s six finalists included four debut novelists – Doshi, Cook and Taylor, as well as Stuart – and omitted high-profile books, including “The Mirror and the Light,” the conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s acclaimed Tudor trilogy. Mantel won the Booker for his two predecessors, “Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies,” and had received a lot of tips for the triplet.
Founded in 1969, the award is open to English-speaking authors of any nationality, but until 2014 only British, Irish and Commonwealth writers were eligible.
That year’s turnaround sparked fears among some Britons that it would become a US-dominated prize. That has not happened yet. There have been two American winners, “The Sellout” by Paul Beatty in 2016 and “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders in 2017.
