D.B.C. Pierre Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

D.B.C. Pierre / DBC Pierre
DBC Pierre was an accident or a late surprise (depending upon who you ask) for a bomber-pilot-turned-scientist, and an air-traffic-controller-turned pianist with an all-female swing band, in Australia of 1961. Barely two years later, Pierre’s dad (who’d christened him Peter, although it didn’t stick past his teens) shot a picture of his kid in Washington for the cover of “Vernon God Little”, which went on to win the Man Booker Prize in 2003.

But his dad had not known at the time where this picture would wind up, and it took almost 36 more years for Pierre to even write this novel, or to even realize that he needed to write a novel. In these intervening years he had grown up in Mexico, or at least made an unconvincing attempt at it, had live in six other countries besides, gotten into a bit of trouble and back out of it, had worked as a photographer, a cartoonist, a filmmaker, and a designer. He had been sniped with a gun by his neighbor (but they were friends after that), had almost died in a horrible car wreck, and gotten bit by a vampire bat. And all of it generated this pile of feelings and observations.

All of this combustion just had to go somewhere, so it goes into Pierre’s books. He takes special pleasure in breathing life into his writing, all of the curious laws of personal physics, of mad contemporary life, which no one can really explain, and he especially loves the magical meeting of minds that occurs between reader and writer, sharing adventures together in silence.

Somewhere there is a corner on some street at sundown, a spat at a battered table, an epiphany after a dusty caper resolves in one of his books, where he hopes he can meet you too.

DBC Pierre is the pen name for Peter Findlay, who has admitted to being a reformed gambler and drug addict, confessing that he once sold his best buddy’s home and pocketed the proceeds.

“Vernon God Little” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2003. In the town jail of the barbecue sauce capital of Central Texas, Martirio, sits Vernon Little (15 years old), dressed in just New Jack trainers and his underpants. He’s in trouble.

Jesus, Vernon’s friend, has just blown sixteen of his classmates away before he turned the gun on himself. And Vernon, since he was Jesus’ only friend, has become the focus of the town’s need for vengeance.

The news of this tragedy has resulted in this quirky backwater town getting flooded with some wannabe CNN hacks that are all-too-keen to claim their 15 minutes and lay all of the blame for these killings at Vernon’s feet. Especially Eulalio Ledesma, who starts manipulating matters so that Vernon becomes the center of the vengeful and bizarre impulses of the townspeople of Martirio. However Vernon is certain that he will be OK. Movies end happy, he says, because they imitate life. Everybody knows that.

Peopled by this cast of coldblooded chatter housewives (all of whom are mysteriously, recently widowed), grotesques, freaks, and one incredibly special adolescent with this unfortunate talent for being in the wrong spot at the right time. This novel is riotously funny and puts materialism, trial by media, and lust for vengeance squarely in the dock. It also heralds the arrival of one of the most acclaimed and exciting voices in contemporary fiction, who with this debut illustrates that in modern times basic humanity and innocence might not be enough.

“Ludmilla’s Broken English” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2006. Pierre’s second novel charts the unlikely meeting between the West and the East which follows Ludmila Derev’s appearance on some Russian brides website. While she is determined to save her family from starvation in the face of marauding Gnez troops, her journey into the world and into womanhood is an odyssey of sour wit, even sourer vodka, and this Soviet tracker that is probably running on goat’s piss.

Thousands of miles to the West, the Heath twins get separated after 33 years conjoined together at the abdomen. Released for the very first time from this institution that is rumored to have been founded for one of Charles II’s illegitimate kids, they suddenly get plunged into a round the clock world that is churning with opportunity, rowdy with the chatter of sex, democracy, freedom, and self-empowerment.

A raucous and wild picaresque that drips with the flavors of British bacon and nasty Russian vodka. This is a story of tango-ing twins that are on this journey into the unknown. It’s a ride so outrageously improbable it just might happen, this confirms DBC’s place in the ranks of today’s most original storytellers.

“Lights Out in Wonderland” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 2010. Gabriel Brockwell (poet, philosopher, and aesthete) is a disaffected twenty-something decadent, and has been thinking terminal. His philosophical inquiries, the abstractions that he indulges, and how any of this relates to a life lived, all are pointing in the same direction. His destination is Wonderland. The style and nature of this journey is all that is to be decided.

Taking in Berlin, London, the Galapagos Islands, and Tokyo, this documents Gabriel’s remarkable global odyssey. Committed to the pursuit of pleasure and searching for Bacchanal in order to obliterate all previous parties, Gabriel’s adventure takes a stop in rehab, a sexual encounter octopus, one near death experience with fugu ovaries, and there’s an orgiastic feast in the bowels of Berlin’s majestic Tempelhof Airport.

Along the way we see this character disintegrate and then reshape before our very eyes. This novel carries you through its many corridors of horror and delight on the back of Gabriel’s voice, which is at once idealistic, skeptical, optimistic, and broken.

This is an allegorical banquet and a sly commentary on these End Times and the march onward to insensate banality, and completes a loose trilogy of fictions, each one standing alone as this joyful expression of the human spirit.