Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize

The 2020 Booker Prize shortlist was announced on 15 September, 2020. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart is one of six incredible books to be shortlisted. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner will be announced on 17 November, 2020 and receive a further £50,000 and can expect instant international recognition.

In the words of the Booker Prize judges, Shuggie Bain finds “humanity and humour in the harsh realities experienced by a marginalised family in 1980s Glasgow”.

Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist with a powerful and important story to tell.