BOOKER winner Douglas Stuart is looking forward to returning to the Borders Book Festival to discuss his book Young Mungo in conversation with Kirsty Wark.

Douglas Stuart took the book world by storm with his Booker winning modern classic Shuggie Bain and has now penned another emotionally powerful and compassionate novel. Young Mungo is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and the deeply moving story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James.

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Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in the hyper-masculine and violently sectarian world of Glasgow’s housing estates in the early 1990s.

Both tender and brutal, this is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.

Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York, where he began a career in fashion design. Shuggie Bain, his first novel, won the Booker Prize and both ‘Debut of the Year’ and ‘Book of the Year’ at the British Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the US National Book Award for Fiction, among many other awards.

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His work has been translated into 39 languages, and his short stories have appeared in the New Yorker. Douglas is working with A24/BBC on a tv adaptation of Shuggie Bain, and is also collaborating with A24 to bring Young Mungo to the screen.

He is also writing his third novel. Douglas Stuart lives in New York but spends as much time as possible in Glasgow. Young Mungo, was a no.1 bestseller in hardback. BBC One’s Imagine film on Douglas, ‘Love, Hope and Grit’ is available on the iPlayer.

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He said: 'As a proud Gala graduate, I always look forward to returning to the Borders. Where better to talk about books than in the shadow of the beautiful Eildons.

“ I love the Borders festival. The readers are some of the warmest and most welcoming that I've met anywhere on my travels. It always feels like a homecoming to me.' 

Douglas Stuart will be at the Borders Book Festival, Melrose on Friday 16th June, 7.15pm 

(Tickets £16, £14)  www.bordersbookfestival.org, Box Office: 0131 290 2112.

@BordersBookFest