John of John (Signed Independent Bookshop Edition)

The stunning new novel from the Booker Prize–winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo. An Oprah's Book Club pick, shortlisted for the 2026 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

While Cal wonders if any young men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son's long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.

John of John is the heartbreaking story of a young man's return home and how the bonds of family life are torn by the weight of expectation. It confirms Douglas Stuart as one of the great British writers at work today.

Praise

“So immersive, so all-encompassing, that I felt like I was living in it. Douglas Stuart has written something brilliant and rare.” — Ann Patchett

“This book is special. It has an urgency, an immediacy, a brilliant sense of place, the drama of fierce emotion repressed, concealed and volcanically exposed.” — Colm Tóibín

“The inimitable world of John of John is passionate, liberating and gorgeous.” — Min Jin Lee

“A fierce, glorious sting of a novel… What an astonishing feat of literary fiction.” — Lauren Groff

“Stuart's most consummate work of literature to date.” — Observer

“A superb example of what a novel can do… I'd give him another Booker right away.” — The Scotsman

This edition

• Hand-signed by Douglas Stuart — “Signed Independent Bookshop Edition” printed on the jacket
• Produced exclusively for independent bookshops — not available from chains
• Beautiful endpapers reproducing a vintage colour chart of greens — a nod to the island's weaving and dyeing tradition
• Picador hardback | 416 pages | Jacket design by Stuart Wilson, Picador Art Department

About the author

Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York, where he began a career in fashion design. Shuggie Bain, his first novel, won the Booker Prize and both 'Debut of the Year' and 'Book of the Year' at the British Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the US National Book Award for Fiction. His second novel, Young Mungo, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker.

Perfect for readers of

Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo, Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These, Ocean Vuong — and collectors: a signed indie-exclusive first edition of a future classic.