A Homecoming: Douglas Stuart and Janne Stigen Drangsholt

For Cal, it is a defeat to be forced to leave the big city of Edinburgh for his childhood home in the tiny island Isle of Harris. Not only has he failed to get a job despite his expensive education, even worse is having to leave the freedom of the city, where he could live out his attraction to men, something that is unthinkable at home, a place where everybody knows everybody, and his father is leading the psalms in the strict, puritan congregation.

In Scottish Douglas Stuart’s new novel John of John, we meet a father and a son, and a windswept and depopulated island community. Here, the men are in charge, of the sheep farming, of the congregation and of keeping the traditional tweed weaving alive. Cal doesn’t fit into the tight mold, but is toon becomes clear that his father too, has his own secrets, about why his wife left him when Call was little, and about the real owner of their farm. Stuart’s story illuminates the islanders’ community and bigotry, their vast elbow room and their confinement.

In just a few years, Douglas Stuart has established himself as one of our time’s leading chroniclers of poverty, marginalization, and queer experience. His debut novel Shuggie Bain won the prestigious Booker Prize, and his second book Young Mungo was also embraced by critics and readers alike.

At the House of Literature, Stuart was joined by writer and Professor of literature Janne Stigen Drangsholt for a conversation about love and loneliness, shame and small-town moral guardians.

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