The 2020 Booker Prize Awarded To Shuggie Bain By Douglas Stuart

Sometimes it takes 30 rejections to win the Booker Prize. Last night the 2020 Booker Prize has announced its winner. This year it went to a Scottish writer Douglas Stuart for his debut novel Shuggie Bain, which was initially rejected by more than 30 publishers.

This autobiographical novel tells a story of a gay boy nicknamed Shuggie living with his alcoholic mother in the 80s Scotland. “It’s challenging, it’s intimate, it’s gripping, it’s daring. To some extent, I think anybody who reads it will never feel the same,” Margaret Busby, the chair of the judges, said about the novel after their unanimous consensus on the winner. Among other judges were the thriller writer Lee Child, the poet Lemn Sissay, the classicist and translator Emily Wilson, and the British author and critic Sameer Rahim.

Douglas Stuart, 44, has started writing this novel a decade ago when he was still working as a senior director of design for Banana Republic. Actually he was working in the fashion industry for almost 20 years, collaborating with such well-known brand companies as Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren.

Last year the Booker Prize had an unprecedented outcome when the Prize was shared by two female authors: Margaret Atwood for The Testaments and Bernardine Evaristo, the first Black female writer to win the Booker Prize, for Girl, Woman, Other.