Scottish novelist Douglas Stuart on the isolation of secret-keeping

This is Fresh Air. I am Terry Gross. You may have read my guest's books. You may have worn the clothes he designed. Douglas Stewart's first novel, Shuggy Bain, won the Booker Prize, which is one of the world's top literary awards.

Much of it was written when Stewart was working in the fashion industry, designing clothes for popular brands like Calvin Klein and Banana Republic. Stewart wouldn't have predicted any of this from what his life was like growing up in a working class neighborhood in Glasgow, Scotland in the eighties. He was raised by a single mother who was addicted to alcohol. Things weren't much better at school where he was relentlessly bullied.

When he came to understand that he was gay, he didn't know anyone else who was. The novel Shuggy Bain tells a story very similar to Stewart's own childhood. Stewart has described his second novel, Young Mungo, as a story about the dangers of first love between two young working class men in Glasgow, and about masculinity, conformity, and falling in love. In our book critic Marin Carrigan's review, she wrote, It's hard to imagine a more disquieting and powerful work of fiction will be published anytime soon about the perils of being different. Douglas Stewart has a new novel called John of John that explores themes of faith, obligation, and how isolating secrets can be.

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