Booker Prize: Douglas Stuart receives the prize for the novel “Shuggie Bain”



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The British Booker Literature Prize this year goes to Scottish native Douglas Stuart for his first novel “Shuggie Bain”. It is based on the author’s childhood and is set in Glasgow in the 1980s. Douglas tells the story of a boy who has a poor, alcoholic mother.

The novel was “bold, terrifying and life-changing,” jury president Margaret Busby said Thursday night at the online ceremony in London. “I’ve always wanted to be a writer, so a dream comes true,” said Stuart, who attended the awards ceremony Thursday night in London due to the crown pandemic via video broadcast. “This changed my whole life.”

“Shuggie Bain” is set in Stuart’s hometown of Glasgow in the 1980s and tells the story of a lonely boy searching for his own identity. Against the backdrop of the city marked by poverty and economic crisis, Stuart describes the relationship between the boy and his alcoholic mother in a compelling and painful way.

Douglas Stuart, 44, grew up in Glasgow before moving to New York to work in the fashion industry. After the announcement, Stuart, who has lived in the United States since 2000, said, “My mother is on every page of this book and without her, the book and I wouldn’t be here.”

The Booker Prize, established in 1969, annually awards the best novel in the English language. The winner receives a cash prize of 55,000 euros.

This year, four young women were among the six authors on the shortlist. British newspaper “The Guardian” described the shortlist as more diverse than ever, with four of the candidates being black. Many of them come from the United States, but they have very different roots.

Last year, the Booker Literature Prize went to two authors once. The awards went to the English Bernardine Evaristo and the Canadian Margaret Atwood. Evaristo received the award for his book “Girl, Woman, Other”, Atwood for the novel “The Testaments”. In fact, the rules prohibit the sharing of the UK’s top literary prize for around 25 years. The jury was unable to agree on one of the two works.

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