Douglas Stuart's Third Novel Lands May 22

May 22. John of John publishes today in the UK, and Douglas Stuart is calling from a dressing room at Union Chapel in London. He's just finished soundcheck. The tour hasn't stopped. Forty-nine days in, no day off yet.

The novel is his third. The first, Shuggie Bain, won the Booker in 2020. The second, Young Mungo, landed two years later. This one took longer. Stuart told Dazed the book wrestles with something he's carried his whole life: homosexuality and faith, in the same body, at the same time. Not as a debate. As a daily fact.

The title character is a young queer man in Glasgow. The structure is biblical, Stuart said, but the setting is council flats and corner shops. He wanted to write about the kind of Catholicism that shapes a life without announcing itself. The kind that shows up in how a person stands in a room, or doesn't.

Stuart has been on book tour since early April. Union Chapel is the midpoint, not the end. He's reading in twelve cities before June. The schedule reads like a campaign stop list, but quieter. Independent bookshops, small halls, church venues that double as performance spaces. No stadium runs.

The book arrives at a moment when faith-and-queerness memoirs are everywhere, but most lean toward resolution. Stuart's doesn't. He told Dazed the struggle is still the struggle. Writing the book didn't solve it. Publishing it won't either. That's the stance.

The tour continues through June 15. The US release follows in August.