Scot shortlisted for Booker Prize with ‘love letter to Glasgow’ debut novel
A Scottish writer has been short listed for the Book er Prize with his debut novel.
Douglas Stuart, a Glaswegian whon owl ives in New York, is nominated for his work Shuggie Bain.
Stuart has descibed as “a love letter to Glasgow” and draws on his childhood in the city in the 1980s.
In his review for The Scotsman, Allan Massie wrote: “It has already been hailed as a masterpiece, almost always a premature judgment. It isn’t that, but it is a very good and often moving novel, which would have been better still with some scrupulous editing.”
Also short listed is Av ni Doshi’s debut novel Burnt Sugar and Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King.
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mo urn able Body, and Real Life by Brandon Taylor are also up for the award.
Dame Hilary Mantel, who featured on the longlist, has failed to make the cut and missed out on becoming a triple winner of the prize with the third book in her Cromwell trilogy, titled The Mirror And The Light.
Commenting on her omission, judge and author of the Jack Reacher series Lee Child said the panel thought it was “an absolutely wonderful novel”. He said her trilogy of novels is “one for the ages”, but added: “There were books that were better, that’s all I can say personally.”
The short list features four women and two men. Cook, Stuart and Taylor are also debut novelists.
The shortlist, announced at a digital press conference yesterday, was chosen by a panel of five judges – literary critic Margaret Busby, authors Child and Same er Ra him, writer Lemn Sissay and classicist Emily Wilson.
The winner will be announced on 17 November. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book, while the winner receives a further £50,000.
Last year’s prize was jointly won by The Testaments by Margaret At wood and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo.