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Vernon God Little is a provocatively satirical, riotously funny look at violence, materialism, and the American media.
DBC Pierre is the pen name of Peter Finlay, who was born in Australia in 1961 and divided most of the first twenty-three years of his life between Texas and Mexico City. He lives in Ireland.
"Mexico, with its contrasts, its crushing poverty and sparkling wealth, its institutionalised corruption and cultural wisdom, its love of life and its embracing of death, undoubtedly set me on a path toward the deep end, philosophically and emotionally speaking. A fast and careless life had put me in tune with the common man, for whom a throw of the dice would mean life or death. When, as a teenager, I set out for Texas to bring cars over the border, I saw that the same divides applied to the richest country on earth. Truest kinship was found in a group of homeless derelicts who camped under a bridge beside where I used to stay. It is in their broken-down lives that the seeds for Vernon were planted."
DBC Pierre has worked as a designer and cartoonist and currently lives in Ireland. Vernon God Little, his first novel, was awarded the 2003 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and the Booker Prize.
Author biography courtesy of Faber and Faber Ltd.
During his dark years of gambling and drug addiction, he once even sold the house of his best friend—and stole the proceeds.
In addition, he ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by taking part in a scheme to find Montezuma's gold in Mexico.
He has said that the £50,000 check awarded with the Booker Prize would go about one-third of the way to settling his outstanding debts.
Pierre landed a publishing deal for his first novel one hour before the first plane hit the World Trade Center on September, 11, 2001. "Ever since, I feel like there's some dark destiny swirling around the book," he said.
Overview
When sixteen kids are shot on high school grounds, everyone looks for someone to blame. Meet Vernon Little, under arrest at the sheriff's office, a teenager wearing nothing but yesterday's underwear and his prized logo sneakers. Moments after the shooter, his best buddy, turns the gun on himself, Vernon is pinned as an accomplice. Out for revenge are the townspeople, the cable news networks, and Deputy Vaine Gurie, a woman whose zeal for the Pritikin diet is eclipsed only by her appetite for barbecued ribs from the Bar-B-Chew Barn. So Vernon does what any red-blooded American teenager would do; he takes off for Mexico.Vernon God Little is a provocatively satirical, riotously funny look ...