Douglas Stuart with Karen Joy Fowler

The Booker Prize–winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo has cemented his place as a leading contemporary literary voice. Join us to hear him discuss his latest Booker Prize Longlisted novel, John of John.

About the Book 

“A stick of dynamite waiting to go off in your hand, the steadily intensifying story of a fractured trio.… Stuart is not just a very good writer but an immensely skilled storyteller… [who] doesn’t let on until the very end whether he is writing toward hope or toward tragedy. Until he reveals the answer, he wants you to stay in the room with these difficult people, to try to puzzle them out, to watch them wage impossible struggles, and to wish them well.”—Mark Harris, The New York Times Book Review

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the remote Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church; and his grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother.

Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn't the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, the threads holding together the community together become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before.

John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. Stuart is a writer who understands that the most intimate family stories can illuminate the largest questions about identity, faith, and the possibility of redemption.

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