Young Mungo

A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain

Acclaimed as one of the best books of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Time, and Amazon, and named a Top 10 Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Young Mungo is a brilliantly constructed and deeply moving story of queer love and working-class families by the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain. Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars-Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--and they should be sworn enemies. Yet against all odds, they fall in love as they find sanctuary and dream of escape in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. But when Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a remote loch with two strange men, he will need all his strength and courage to find his way back to a place where he and James might still have a future.

“Praise for Shuggie Bain : WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE New York Times Bestseller Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction Named the Best Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2021 Finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize The Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2020 Shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Breakthrough Author Award Named a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times , NPR, TIME , BuzzFeed , the Economist , the Times (UK), the Independent (UK), the Daily Telegraph (UK), Barnes & Noble, Kirkus Reviews , the New York Public Library, the Chicago Public Library, and the Washington Independent Review of Books "We were bowled over by this first novel, which creates an amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love. The book gives a vivid glimpse of a marginalized, impoverished community in a bygone era of British history. It''s a desperately sad, almost-hopeful examination of family and the destructive powers of desire." --Booker Prize Judges "This year''s breakout debut . . . It has drawn comparisons to D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Frank McCourt." --Alexandra Alter, New York Times "I''m really, really stunned by it. It''s so good. I think it''s the best first book I''ve read in many years . . . It''s a heartbreaking story, and quite hard to read at times, but it''s almost like it''s uplifting on behalf of literature. And it''s written with great warmth and compassion for the characters." --Karl Ove Knausgaard, Guardian "The body--especially the body in pain--blazes on the pages of Shuggie Bain . . . This is the world of Shuggie Bain, a little boy growing up in Glasgow in the 1980s. And this is the world of Agnes Bain, his glamorous, calamitous mother, drinking herself ever so slowly to death. The wonder is how crazily, improbably alive it all is . . . The book would be just about unbearable were it not for the author''s astonishing capacity for love. He''s lovely, Douglas Stuart, fierce and loving and lovely. He shows us lots of monstrous behavior, but not a single monster--only damage. If he has a sharp eye for brokenness, he is even keener on the inextinguishable flicker of love that remains . . . The book leaves us gutted and marveling: Life may be short, but it takes forever." --Leah Hager Cohen, New York Times Book Review "A debut novel that reads like a masterpiece." --Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post "A novel that cracks open the human heart, brings you inside, tears you up, and brings you up, with its episodes of unvarnished love, loss, survival and sorrow." --Scott Simon, NPR''s "Weekend Edition" "Agnes Bain [is] the unforgettable human train wreck at the center of Douglas Stuart''s novel Shuggie Bain . . . Titling the novel after Shuggie rather than the woman who dominates him seems like a small gesture of defiance on Mr. Stuart''s part . . . Mr. Stuart vividly inhabits the city''s singular ''Weegie'' dialect and vocabulary . . . It''s the obstinate Bain pride that prevents this novel from becoming a wallow in victimhood and gives it its ruined dignity." --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal "The domestic spaces, the blighted landscape, the meanness of people, the bullying at school, the constant threat of violence, all add up to a picture of misery. Against this, however, there is an undercurrent that becomes more and more powerful, as Stuart, with great subtlety, builds up an aura of tenderness in the relationship between helpless Shuggie and his even more helpless mother . . . By drawing Agnes and Shuggie with so much texture, he makes clear that neither mother nor son can be easily seen as a victim. Instead, they emerge forcefully; they are fully, palpably present." --Colm T”

Praise for Young Mungo:

Shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize

Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award

Longlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, NPR, Time, Kirkus Reviews, Guardian, Amazon, Apple, BookPage, BookBrowse, Library Journal, Reader's Digest, AARP, Hudson Booksellers, Chicago Public Library, and the Times (UK)

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

Shortlisted for Scotland's National Book Award

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by the New York Times, Time, Vogue, Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, Irish Times, Kirkus Reviews, and Literary Hub

"Young Mungo seals it: Douglas Stuart is a genius . . . A tale of romantic and sexual awakening punctuated by horrific violence. . . . The raw poetry of Stuart's prose is perfect to catch the open spirit of this handsome boy . . . Stuart quickly proves himself an extraordinarily effective thriller writer. He's capable of pulling the strings of suspense excruciatingly tight while still sensitively exploring the confused mind of this gentle adolescent trying to make sense of his sexuality . . . But even as Stuart draws these timelines together like a pair of scissors, he creates a little space for Mungo's future, a little mercy for this buoyant young man."-Ron Charles, Washington Post

"[A] bear hug of a new novel . . . It's a classic Dickensian arc: The unwanted young lad, hoping for better things, is caught up in broader violent schemes and made to choose between the life he wants for himself and the one set out before him . . . But novelists have been flaccidly imitating the 19th century realists for so long that it's a shock when one carries it out this successfully. Stuart oozes story. Mungo is alive. There is feeling under every word . . . This novel cuts you and then bandages you back up."--Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times

"The working-class 1980s Glasgow of Douglas Stuart's Booker Prize-winning debut Shuggie Bain is again the setting of his follow-up Young Mungo, and with it come the violence, religious tribalism, economic depression, diehard loyalties and fatalistic humor of the era, all expressed in the crooked poetry of Glaswegian dialect . . . The crafted storylines in Young Mungo develop with purpose and converge explosively, couching all the horror and pathos within a tighter, more gripping reading experience--an impressive advancement, in other words, from an already accomplished author."--Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"A nuanced and gorgeous heartbreaker of a novel . . . It's a testament to Stuart's unsparing powers as a storyteller that we can't possibly anticipate how very badly--and baroquely--things will turn out. Young Mungo is a suspense story wrapped around a novel of acute psychological observation. It's hard to imagine a more disquieting and powerful work of fiction will be published anytime soon about the perils of being different."--Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

"Young Mungo bridges the worlds of Stuart's earlier novel and stories . . . Stuart writes beautifully, with marvelous attunement to the poetry in the unlovely and the mundane . . . The novel conveys an enveloping sense of place, in part through the wit and musicality of its dialogue."--Yen Pham, New York Times Book Review

"Young Mungo is a finer novel than its predecessor, offering many of the same

Douglas Stuart is a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been translated into over forty languages. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the 2020 Booker Prize and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It was named both the British Book of the Year, and Debut of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards, as well as being a finalist for over twenty other literary awards. His latest novel, Young Mungo, was an international bestseller and a finalist for the Carnegie Medal. His essays on gender, class, and conformity have featured on Literary Hub and his short stories are published in the New Yorker. He is currently working on adapting both of his novels for A24 pictures. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Stuart has a Masters from the Royal College of Art and since 2000, he has lived and worked in New York City.

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