New York-based Scottish writer Douglas Stuart’s debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the 2020 Booker Prize for fiction. He received a £50,000 prize and trophy, a designer-bound edition of his book and an additional £2,500 for being shortlisted.
Douglas Stuart is the second Scottish writer to win the prize after James Kelman in 1994 for his fiction How Late it Was.
Shuggie Bain took nearly 10 years to be completed. The autobiographical novel presents a searing account of a young boy who grows up in Glasgow of the 1980s, with a mother battling addiction and who died of alcoholism when he was 16. The novel tells about the unconditional love between the mother and her youngest son (Shuggie Bain). It portrays the struggles of Shuggie Bain who is burdened with responsibilities beyond his years. The work was described as a classic by one of the judges.
Booker Prize, first given in 1969, is a leading literary award in the English-speaking world, which has brought recognition, reward, and readership to outstanding fiction for over fifty years. The prize is awarded annually to the best novel of the year, written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. The prize consists of £50,000 for the winner and £2,500 for six shortlisted authors.