The Observer Book Club with Douglas Stuart

Join us for a powerful Observer Book Club conversation with Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo, as he returns with his deeply affecting new novel, John of John.​

Set between Glasgow and the Scottish Highlands, John of John follows a father and son bound together by love, shame and a past neither can quite escape. With his signature blend of tenderness and unflinching realism, Stuart explores masculinity, addiction, working-class resilience and the scars of inherited trauma, asking how far any of us can travel from the stories we were born into.

In the Observer newsroom, he will discuss the origins of the novel, the communities and landscapes that shape his characters, and why he continues to write about the people mainstream British fiction so often overlooks. Together, we’ll ask: What does it mean to be a “good” man in the aftermath of violence and poverty? How do families survive what they cannot forgive? And can love, however compromised, ever be enough?​