John of John

Stuart has a way of getting to the heart of what it’s like to be human better than anyone else. Beautiful yet heart-wrenchingly painful, ferocious yet gentle. – Bryony 

The stunning new novel from the Booker Prize-winning, Sunday Times-bestselling author of SHUGGIE BAIN and YOUNG MUNGO. SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR FICTIONAN OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK

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 lonely 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 the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.

FORMAT | HARDBACK