Glaswegian author Douglas Stuart will release his new book ‘Young Mungo’ on 14th April 2022 via Picador, and it’s available to pre-order now.
Available in hardback, audio book and eBook, ‘Young Mungo’ is a gripping and revealing story, both tender and brutal, about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of being different in a hyper-masculine world.
Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in the hyper-masculine and violently sectarian world of Glasgow’s housing estates in the early 1990s. They should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all, and yet they become close friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon ‘doocot’ that James has built for his prize racing birds.
As they find themselves falling in love, they dream of escaping the grey city, and Mungo works especially hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his elder brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable.
When Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.
‘Young Mungo’ Stuart’s first book since his first novel ‘Shuggie Bain’, which won the Booker Prize and both ‘Debut of the Year’ and ‘Book of the Year’ at the British Book Aways. Stuart is currently working on the script for the TV adaptation to be made by A24 and directed by Stephen Daldry.
See the cover for ‘Young Mungo’ below:
