But last year, Stuart e to that of its protagonist, like the novel’s predecessor

“ Part of my own trauma is that, when I got to New York, every time I opened my mouth, someone would always go…” – he puts on a thick, Yank accent – “‘Oh my gawd, you’re from Scaaatland! ‘ I was in my 20s and 30s and I’d never been [there],” he says with a nervous smile and shake of his head. ? “ So who knows where [Mungo] is when he doesn’t even know?”

It’s never hummus porn, or baba ganoush porn,” he says pithily, ? “ it’s just literature

This method of storytelling, of writing about characters in dismal social circumstances, has led to Stuart’s work being framed as – in the words of one early reviewer of Young Mungo – ? “ nothing but non-stop misery”. I ask how he reckons with this, but he quickly retorts that he makes a point of not engaging with criticism, good or bad.

“ I didn’t know people felt that way,” he says, bottom lip bitten, slightly dumbfounded. ? “ I understand I’m writing about tough lives, but I don’t see my books as miserable at all.”

Perhaps that says a lot about the byproducts of his success, I suggest. His readership is now far greater than just those who were drawn to the story by association, those who can relate to his own upbringing. (The most recent figures suggested that over 1.3 million copies of Shuggie Bain have been sold in the English language alone). He’s spoken candidly in the past about the idea of his literature being construed as a ? “ poverty porn” by critics. “[That phrase] tells poor people that they don’t deserve to write about their own existence truthfully,” he says to me now.

“ People from the middle classes never have that levelled against them. It’s never hummus porn, or baba ganoush porn, it’s just literature. All that kind of banter does is silence anyone who wants to write with clarity about poverty.”

“ I mean, how many Edith Wharton stories do I have to read, or [stories] about gilded life?” he asks rhetorically, questioning the assumptively innate literary credentials of stories about posh folks’ experiences. ? “ People from the middle classes never have that levelled against them. All that kind of banter does is silence anyone who wants to write with clarity about poverty.”

The story of Shuggie, and of Mungo in a way, are Douglas Stuart’s way of revising the erasure of the communities he never recognised in art growing up. As he pointedly puts it: ? “ My childhood had always been hidden from people, so I thought I’d give it the dignity of details. People are coming on this journey, so they’re coming, and they’ll feel for these characters.”

There was once a time when Young Mungo had a different title: Loch Awe. It was inspired by a second narrative that weaves through the ping trip he’s been sent on to toughen up, with two men who’ve recently left prison.

His reasoning: he calls the pair of books ? “ a tapestry”, both woven from the same cloth. ? “ Mungo meets Shuggie in this book,” he says, smiling. ? “ I don’t tell the reader that, but they collide,” he clarifies, meaning their encounter is figurative rather than literal.

There’s a third book already on the way, set in the Scottish Outer Hebrides, amidst the islands’ tweed trade, a work that promises something of a combination of Stuart’s old day job and his new one. ? “ It’s about loneliness and coming of age as a young gay man, living somewhere really remote,” he said last year. In 2019 he spent three months living on the Isle of Lewis, interviewing local spinners, weavers and crofters, ? “ just because I wanted it to be truthful as possible, and her engaГ±o certainly understand loneliness, and what it feels like to be the only queer in the village.”