SHAPIRO: There are also so many just wonderful words that I feel like people should know, like smir for, like, fine, foggy, just the side of rain, almost, like dreich to describe weather. And I want them, first of all, to be able, if they could, if they were real people, to be able to pick up the book and really see the world as they know it represented with the language they would use.

And I always want to be standing shoulder to shoulder with my characters. And so if I had not written the books in their natural tongue and how they see the world, then I would almost be standing in opposition to them or on the outside saying, hey look at this. I had to decide how I was going to approach my characters because they don't often find themselves in literature, and they don't turn to literature. Well, I think readers are always curious, and so the ability to discover new words or new ways of framing dialogue is a joy for me, first as a reader. SHAPIRO: Why is it important to you to write in such a specifically Scottish Glaswegian way, even if that means, you know, including slang that might be new to readers outside of Scotland? Mungo tried his best to wear the uniform, but he felt like an imposter. It had a gangly forward motion, like a big, bald, bandy-legged weasel, head swung low, eyes always fixed on the prey ahead, ready to lunge with either a fist or a silver blade. This swagger was a uniform as ubiquitous as any football top. He swung his meatless legs in imitation of their guileless way of walking, his shoulders about his ears and a silver scowl on his face. He fell into formation amongst the baby-faced warriors. STUART: (Reading) Mungo came out of the close and joined the pack of Proddy boys heading to the waste ground. SHAPIRO: That world has a very specific way of speaking, so I asked Douglas Stuart to read a paragraph where Mungo reluctantly joins a gang of Protestant teenagers going to fight a rival group of Catholic boys. They really have to face the world outside their door because that's the only world they know. You know, they can't just up and leave and go find a different place where they belong in the world.

But this book centers on a romance between two teenage boys - one Protestant, one Catholic.ĭOUGLAS STUART: And I think when you're talking about queerness at that time and you're also intersecting it with class or with poverty or social mobility, then the stakes are very different for the characters. Douglas Stuart's new novel, 'Young Mungo,' takes place nearby with similar characters.

It told the story of an alcoholic single mother and her children living in a Sighthill tenement in Glasgow in the 1990s. His first novel, 'Shuggie Bain,' won a pile of major awards, including the Booker Prize, in 2020. Douglas Stuart entered the literary world with a bang.

Young mungo