Douglas Stuart, author of the 2020 Booker Prize winner Shuggie Bain, shares his favourite Scottish books

Young Adam is a brilliant literary debut from Alexander Trocchi. Set on the canal which runs between Edinburgh and Glasgow, the novel follows Joe, who works as a barge hand. When he and the skipper he works for find the corpse of a young woman in the water tensions are high, and continue to rise when Joe seduces the skipper’s wife. 

Morvern Callar, a low-paid supermarket worker in a remote Highland seaport, wakes one morning to find that her long-term boyfriend has committed suicide. He leaves behind the novel he has written with instructions on how to get it published. Morvern doesn’t follow his instructions though, and the shocking decision she makes offers her an escape from the small-town life that is slowly suffocating her. 

This is the story of a young, out-of-work brickie in Glasgow. Moving between the corner pub and the small tenement flat he shares with his mother, he searches for direction in life. It’s a warm, moving portrait of working-class life from a true working-class writer.

Struggling to deal with the deaths of her mother and her lover, Joy Stone desperately tries to find the trick to keep living. As anorexia and alcoholism threaten to overwhelm her, Joy’s world becomes ever more narrow. This dark yet funny novel is an honest and often shocking portrait of a woman destroying herself. 

Irvine Welsh’s most famous novel was adapted into the controversial but much-loved film of the same name, starring Ewan McGregor and directed by Danny Boyle. Following a group of junkies and friends living in Edinburgh, this is a powerful, disturbing and often very funny portrayal of addiction. 

These three stories paint a vivid portrait of life in the streets, schools and tenements of 1950s and '60s Glasgow. 'The Boy Who Wanted Peace' is a parable of greed and religion, 'Grace and Miss Partridge' follows an elderly woman who develops a disturbing obsession, while 'Mr Alfred M.A.' charts the mental collapse of a middle-aged schoolteacher.  Full of humour, realism and moral concern, these stories present a vision of loneliness, longing and the cruelty of youth. 

This Man Booker Prize-winning novel is a dark political parable written in the language of the Scottish working-class. When Glaswegian ex-con Sammy wakes up in a jail cell after a bender, he discovers that he has gone completely blind. As he starts to search for his girlfriend who has disappeared, life gets even worse . . . 

Set in a remote Scottish crofting community in the year 1869, this Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel is the story of a bright young man called Roderick Macrae who is arrested for a brutal triple murder. It’s clear from his memoir that he is guilty, but can his advocate uncover why he committed the crime and save him from the gallows?

In the forgotten heartlands of Scotland, your mates, your young team, they're everything you've got. At fourteen Azzy Williams is a rising star. At seventeen he's out of control. And by twenty-one, he'd like to leave it all behind, but finding a way out isn't easy.

The Young Team is an energetic novel, full of the loyalty, laughs and violence of life on the streets. This powerful story about the realities of life for young people in Britain today is inspired by the author's own teenage experiences.

Set in a poverty-stricken Glasgow in the early 1980s, Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning debut is a heartbreaking story which lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty and the limits of love. Agnes Bain has always dreamed of greater things, but when her husband abandons her she finds herself trapped in a decimated mining town with her three children, and descends deeper and deeper into drink. Her son Shuggie tries to help Agnes long after her other children have fled, but he too must abandon her to save himself. Shuggie is different, and he is picked on by the local children and condemned by adults. But he believes that if he tries his hardest he can escape this hopeless place.