Douglas Stuart: Young Mungo

Booker Prize-winning Scottish novelist Douglas Stuart speaks with Kathryn Ryan about his new novel, Young Mungo which is breaking hearts. Young Mungo develops into a romance between two teenage boys. Mungo is Protestant, James is Catholic. Their relationship is forbidden on so many levels. Set in the early '90s in hard-bitten Glaswegian tenements riven with sectarian violence, where unemployed former shipbuilders "rot in front of daytime tv" and real men prove themselves as thugs. Young Mungo is a story exploring the bounds of masculinity, the magnetism and disappointment of family, the violence experienced by many queer people, and the dangers of falling in love. Douglas Stuart is Glagwegian born and bred. He won the Booker Prize two years ago for his first novel, Shuggie Bain, finally trying his hand at writing age 40, after a glittering career in fashion design.