The NZ Book Council has just announced that tickets are now on sale for an evening with DBC Pierre, the winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize for fiction for his Faber & Faber novel Vernon God Little.

Australian-born DBC Pierre (43) was brought up in Mexico, and currently resides in Ireland. He has worked as a designer and is internationally published as a cartoonist. He has been “shot at, nearly killed in a car accident and fallen into drugs, gambling and severe debt”. Then he goes and wins one of literature’s greatest prizes, oh and £50,000, for his first and only novel. Said novel also won the 2003 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic writing. Sigh.

His hero has “congenital handicaps of sensitivity, meekness and low ambition”. Vernon Gregory Little stands accused of the murder of 16 high school students, in a small Texan town that needs a scapegoat. On the day of his execution, he comes up with a plan…

For your pleasure we have found a good review and a short excerpt from Vernon God Little and even an interview!

Cliff Fell will chat with DBC Pierre about his life and work at St Andrews on the Terrace, 30 The Terrace, Wellington, at 6pm on Wednesday 9 June. Tickets available from Jasmine De Boni (events@bookcouncil.org.nz) or phone 04 499-1569.