New York-based Scottish writer Douglas Stuart has won the prestigious 50,000-pound Booker Prize for his autobiographical debut novel ‘Shuggie Bain’, beating Indian-origin author Avni Doshi’s ‘Burnt Sugar’.
Shuggie Bain is a tale of love and alcoholism set in 1980s Glasgow and “destined to be a classic”. Stuart, 44, dedicated the book to his mother, who died of alcoholism when he was 16-years-old.
The book was rejected by 30 editors before it was picked up by publishers Grove Atlantic in the US and Picador in the UK.
After graduating from the Royal College of Art in London, he moved to New York to start a career in fashion design. Stuart has worked for various brands, including Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Gap. He started writing in his spare time a decade ago.
Dubai-based Indian-origin writer Doshi, who was shortlisted among the final six authors for her debut novel ‘Burnt Sugar’, lost out on the top prize. She was in the running for this year’s prize alongside Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga for the third novel in her trilogy ‘This Mournable Body’ on a shortlist otherwise dominated by US authors – Diane Cook for ‘The New Wilderness’, Maaza Mengiste for ‘The Shadow King’ and Brandon Taylor for ‘Real Life’.
The 2020 Booker Prize judging panel was chaired by Margaret Busby, editor, literary critic and former publisher, and consisted of author Lee Child; author and critic Sameer Rahim; writer and broadcaster Lemn Sissay; and classicist and translator Emily Wilson.
This year, the Booker Prize ceremony was very different due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 2020 “winner ceremony without walls” was broadcast from London’s Roundhouse. All six shortlisted authors joined the ceremony via a special screen in the Roundhouse and the event included both virtual and in-person special guests. The Booker Prize for Fiction was first awarded in 1969 and is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The rules of the prize were changed at the end of 2013 to embrace the English language “in all its vigour, vitality, versatility and glory”, opening it up to writers beyond the UK and Commonwealth, provided they were writing novels in English that are published in the UK.
