From impoverished in Glasgow to the toast of New York

Fashion designer Douglas Stuart turned his poverty-stricken childhood on a housing estate into a Booker Prize-winning novel.

New York-based Scot Douglas Stuart has won the 2020 Booker Prize with his debut novel, "Shuggie Bain". Martyn Pickersgill

Claire Allfree

Nov 28, 2020 – 12.00am

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On Wednesday, the night before the winner of the Booker Prize was announced, Douglas Stuart's husband Michael Carey bet him £50,000 ($91,000) he would win; Stuart was convinced he wouldn't. "So now I owe him £50,000," says Stuart, with a laugh, "which is fine by me."

You believe him, too. Stuart does not strike you as the sort to splash his winnings on a yacht. Born in Glasgow, but a resident of New York for the past two decades (he has been a US citizen for many years), he was by some distance the favourite to win this year's prize for Shuggie Bain, his heart-stopping semi-autobiographical account of a small boy growing up with his alcoholic mother in recession-ravaged 1980s Scotland.

The Telegraph London