Manchester Literature Festival presents Douglas Stuart

About the show

We’re delighted to welcome back to Manchester Literature Festival Booker Prize-winning novelist Douglas Stuart, to discuss his profoundly moving new novel John of John, set on the Isle of Harris.

Returning home after his art school years on the mainland, John-Calum Macleod is drawn back into a tightly bound Hebridean community shaped by faith, silence and watchful scrutiny. Caught between his devout father John, sheep farmer and weaver, and his Glaswegian grandmother, Cal navigates desire and masculinity. As the seasons change, the fragile balance holding family and community together is threatened.

Tender, immersive and unflinching, John of John explores the weight of family expectation, the compromises demanded by love and the devastating cost of lives constrained by silence.

This is a unique opportunity to hear from one of the most vital voices in contemporary fiction.