"Douglas Stuart is a genius."--Washington Post
From the Booker Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes a vivid, moving novel following a young man returning to his Hebridean island home, a portrait of a father's expectations and a son's desires
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the island of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft where he grew up and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother.
Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son's long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn't the only one in the croft house keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything seems poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before.
John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that cements Douglas Stuart's reputation as one of our greatest working novelists.
About the Author :
Douglas Stuart is a Scottish-American author. His New York Times-bestselling debut novel Shuggie Bain won prizes including the 2020 Booker Prize and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, among many others. His latest novel, Young Mungo, was a national bestseller, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal and a finalist for the British Book Award, and one of the most highly acclaimed books of the year. His stories are published in the New Yorker and his essays have featured on Literary Hub. He lives in New York City.
Review :
Praise for John of John:
A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of 2025
A Publishers Weekly Most Anticipated Book of 2025
"To read John of John is to move to the Isle of Harris and take up residence in the family croft. The novel is so immersive, so all-encompassing, that I felt like I was living in it. Douglas Stuart has written something brilliant and rare."--Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake
"Douglas Stuart's John of John has the emotional range and sense of sympathy of his earlier books, but this book is special, it has an urgency, an immediacy, a brilliant sense of place, the drama of fierce emotion repressed, concealed and volcanically exposed."--Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn
"Like Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Douglas Stuart explores the visible and invisible chains of love forged between a parent and child -- as each grapples with his respective faith and complex humanity. Stuart's characters yearn and yield tenderly as they struggle with fate and free will. The inimitable world of John of John is passionate, liberating, and gorgeous."--Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, finalist for the National Book Award
"John of John is a fierce, glorious sting of a novel. Douglas Stuart has somehow lifted the rocky, windswept landscape of the Scottish Western Isles--as well as its externally stark and thwarted, if internally blazing, characters--and replicated both with utter flawlessness on the page. What an astonishing feat of literary fiction."--Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
"John of John is gorgeous--the most satisfying novel I've read in a long time. The Western Isles of Scotland may be isolated, yet I could see, smell, hear, and touch these memorable characters, and get caught up in their world. Stuart's tale is soulful, tragic, comic, uplifting, and ultimately so very satisfying. Destined to be a classic."--Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone
"In Scotland's Hebrides islands, a closeted gay man returns home to an insular community of sheep farmers and weavers, where complications and secrets await . . . The central question of the book, facing all the main characters, is whether it's possible to inhabit the place one calls home as one's genuine self. Stay or go? Life or death? With his gift for creating vibrantly specific characters and settings, Stuart again taps profound human truth."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"John of John is a profound and unflinching exploration of masculinity, sexuality, faith, and the haunting weight of heritage on the human soul. Set against the stark beauty of the Hebrides, where the landscape, in all its colour and texture, is as alive and commanding as its people, this novel delves into paternal silence, love and loneliness, and the unsettling sense that we are never truly unwatched. Written in timeless prose, it speaks with urgent relevance. No one crafts characters with the depth and precision of Stuart--John of John is a masterpiece."--Elaine Feeney, author of How to Build a Boat
"Breathtaking, life affirming, transcendent storytelling. John of John shows Stuart to be a true and abiding talent."--Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
"This is literary phenomenon Douglas Stuart's finest novel yet, and that is saying something. Stuart stacks achievement upon achievement like stones on a towering cairn: he infuses his narrative with an authentic understanding of the essence of Hebridean identity; he creates a novel that has the grandeur of classical literature but the readability and relatability of a contemporary masterpiece; he brings to life a most astute understanding of individual psychology, community relationships, and everyday living in a geographically and culturally distinctive place. The novel weaves its generous, impassioned, transfixing way towards a breathless and unpredictable conclusion. Epic and intimate, this is the kind of novel that enlarges your very capacity for empathy."--Kevin MacNeil, author of The Stornoway Way
Awards and Praise for Douglas Stuart:
Shuggie Bain
Winner of the Booker Prize - Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction - A New York Times bestseller - Finalist for the National Book Award - Finalist for the Kirkus Prize - Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize - Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel - Finalist for the L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction - Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Young Mungo
Finalist for the British Book Award - Shortlisted for Scotland's National Book Award - Shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize - A national bestseller - Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence - Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award - Longlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award - A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
"Young Mungo seals it: Douglas Stuart is a genius . . . He's capable of pulling the strings of suspense excruciatingly tight while still sensitively exploring the confused mind of this gentle adolescent trying to make sense of his sexuality"--Ron Charles, Washington Post
"We were bowled over by this first novel, which creates an amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love. The book gives a vivid glimpse of a marginalised, impoverished community in a bygone era of British history. It's a desperately sad, almost-hopeful examination of family and the destructive powers of desire."--Booker Prize Judges, on Shuggie Bain
"The crafted storylines in Young Mungo develop with purpose and converge explosively, couching all the horror and pathos within a tighter, more gripping reading experience--an impressive advancement, in other words, from an already accomplished author."--Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"The tough portraits of Glaswegian working-class life from William McIlvanney, James Kelman, Alasdair Gray, and Agnes Owens can be felt in Shuggie Bain. . . This overwhelmingly vivid novel is not just an accomplished debut. It also feels like a moving act of filial reverence."--James Walton, New York Review of Books
"The body--especially the body in pain--blazes on the pages of Shuggie Bain. . .The book would be just about unbearable were it not for the author's astonishing capacity for love. He's lovely, Douglas Stuart, fierce and loving and lovely. He shows us lots of monstrous behavior, but not a single monster. . . The book leaves us gutted and marveling: Life may be short, but it takes forever."--Leah Hager Cohen, New York Times Book Review
"[A] bear hug of a new novel . . . Stuart oozes story. Mungo is alive. There is feeling under every word . . . This novel cuts you and then bandages you back up."--Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times, on Young Mungo
"Shuggie Bain is a novel that cracks open the human heart, brings you inside, tears you up, and brings you up, with its episodes of unvarnished love, loss, survival and sorrow."--Scott Simon, NPR's "Weekend Edition"
"Stuart, with great subtlety, builds up an aura of tenderness in the relationship between helpless Shuggie and his even more helpless mother . . . By drawing Agnes and Shuggie with so much texture, he makes clear that neither mother nor son can be easily seen as a victim. Instead, they emerge forcefully; they are fully, palpably present."--Colm Tóibín, Bookforum, on Shuggie Bain
