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By Avni Doshi
The pandemic prize, livestreamed in lieu of having the literary world in attendance, was a rags to rag-trade to riches story when the erstwhile fashion designer Douglas Stuart won.
Stuart’s Shuggie Bain is a Mcbildungsroman set in working-class Glasgow in the febrile 1980s and the character of Shuggie reflected something of the author’s own difficult childhood. The novel was a serial rejectee, being turned down by some 30 publishers before being picked up by Picador.
Stuart, who had a career in fashion in New York, cited the only other Scottish winner as an inspiration; reading James Kelman, he said, was one of the first times he ‘had seen his people and dialect on the page’.
Winner The Booker Prize 2020
By Avni Doshi
By Diane Cook