‘The winner was the Mexican-Australian first-time novelist Peter Finlay: a man who, we learned at the weekend, enjoyed a past life as gambling-addicted junkie con-artist who sold his best friend’s house and fled with the cash. (This is a charge levelled insufficiently often, for my tastes, against Anita Brookner)’ – Sam Leith
D.B.C. Pierre (a.k.a. Peter Finlay) was born in Australia to English parents, has lived in Mexico and the United States and was resident in Ireland when he won the Booker. Vernon God Little was his first novel. His second, Ludmila’s Broken English, was published in 2006.
Editions:
D.B.C. Pierre, Vernon God Little, (London: Faber and Faber, 2003).
2003 Shortlist:
Monica Ali, Brick Lane
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Damon Galgut, The Good Doctor
Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal
Clare Morrall, Astonishing Splashes of Colour
D.B.C. Pierre, Vernon God Little
2003 Judges:
John Carey (chair), D.J. Taylor, Rebecca Stephens, Francine Stock, A.C. Grayling
Topics:
• A Taste for Scandal.
• Ventriloquy and Originality.
• The Non-American American Novel.
Reviews:
Carrie O’Grady, ‘Lone Star’, The Guardian, (18 January 2003).
Jonathan Heawood, ‘Growing Up With Jesus’, The Observer, (19 January 2003).
Sam Leith, ‘Springer’s America’, The Daily Telegraph, (25 January 2003).
Marianne Brace, ‘A Huckleberry Finn for the Eminem Generation’, Independent, (3 February 2003).
David Robson, ‘Who Dies? You Decide’, The Sunday Telegraph, (23 February 2003).
M. Kakutani, ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas (Via Australia)’, New York Times, (5 November 2003).
Sam Sifton, ‘Holden Caulfield on Ritalin’, New York Times Book Review, (9 November 2003).
James Wood, ‘The Lie-World’, London Review of Books, (20 November 2003).
Chris Lehmann, ‘Dumb and Dumber’, Washington Post, (2 December 2003).
Theodore Dalrymple, 'Escape from Barbarity' The Spectator (3 Jan 2004).
Note: there are some interesting things in several of these reviews, but the meatiest and most useful is the James Wood LRB piece, linked above.
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