Reading of Douglas Stewart's Booker Prize shortlisted novel 'John of John' at The Green Room.
Douglas Stewart is reading from John of John at The Green Room on Saturday 31 October, at 2:30 PM. It's a reading of his latest novel, and given the book's run this year, it's a good time to catch it in person.
John of John has had a massive year. It's been shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize and the Orwell Prize for Fiction, and it made the Oprah's Book Club pick, so it's been getting a fair bit of attention. The critics have been generous too, with Colm Tóibín, Min Jin Lee, Ann Patchett and Elaine Feeney all weighing in. When a book collects that kind of support from across the Atlantic and the UK, it's usually worth your time.
The story itself is a family one, set in the Outer Hebrides. It follows John-Calum Macleod, who returns to the island of Harris and finds himself caught between two very different figures in his life: his father John, a sheep farmer and a pillar of the local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella. It's a story about returning home and the friction that comes when you're pulled between the people who shaped you, and the Hebridean setting sits right at the heart of it.
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If you've been following the buzz around the book but haven't had a chance to sit with it yet, hearing it read by the author is a different way in. The reading is on Saturday 31 October at 2:30 PM at The Green Room, 19-25 William St, Edinburgh EH3 7NG.
