Shuggie Bain

Shuggie Bain is the first novel by the Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart, published in 2020. It tells the story of Hugh Bain, called Shuggie, the youngest of three children growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes in working-class Glasgow during the years when the city's traditional industries were being closed.

The book follows the family through a series of flats and housing schemes as Agnes's drinking and her marriages take them further out. Shuggie's father is a violent philanderer, his older brother and sister leave one at a time, and he is left as his mother's companion and carer, a boy who is different from the other children on the estate and is punished for it.

Stuart drew on his own childhood in Glasgow, and the novel's method is close attention to ordinary domestic detail set against unemployment and an epidemic of drug deaths. It was awarded the Booker Prize in 2020, making Stuart the second Scottish writer to win it, and it was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.