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DBC Pierre | |
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| Born | Peter Warren Finlay 1961 (age 63–64) Old Reynella, South Australia |
| Pen name | DBC Pierre |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Period | 2003–present |
| Genre | Satire,dark comedy,allegory |
| Notable works | Vernon God Little |
Peter Warren Finlay[1][2] (born in 1961), also known asDBC Pierre, is an Australian author who wrote the novelVernon God Little.
Pierre was born inSouth Australia, and largely raised inMexico. He has resided in theRepublic of Ireland and now, according to an August 2020 interview inThe Guardian, lives inCambridgeshire.[3]
Pierre was awarded the 2003Man Booker Prize forVernon God Little, his first novel, becoming the third Australian-born author to be so honoured. Upon winning theWhitbread First Novel Award in2003 he became the first writer to receive a Man Booker and a Whitbread for the same book. The book also won the Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman Prize for comic literature at theHay Festival in 2003, and earned the author aJames Joyce Award from theLiterary and Historical Society ofUniversity College Dublin.
Born inOld Reynella, South Australia, where his father was lecturing ingenetics at theUniversity of Adelaide, Pierre had, by the age of two, already spent time in the United States, the South Pacific and Great Britain. He was then raised from early childhood into his 20s inMexico City's community ofJardines del Pedregal, and attendedEdron Academy.[2]
Pierre was taken to revisit his home byAlan Yentob for theBBC television seriesImagine in 2004.
He recalls, in aGuardian article of 1 September 2004, that he would later return to Durham most years, usually around the second week in July, to see theDurham Miners Gala. Aged seven, he fell ill withhepatitis and had to spend a year in bed. After he recovered, his parents were faced with the choice of keeping him a year behind in school, or letting him stay in his class and just catch up. They chose the latter. Pierre sees this as the moment "when all the trouble began... " as it meant his falling out with his peers.[4]
His father, once decorated as aLancaster Bomber pilot inWorld War II, by then a scientific partner toNobel Peace Prize winnerNorman E. Borlaug, fell ill when Pierre was sixteen, and died three years later.
Pierre's permanent residency in Mexico ended atReynosa on the United States-Mexican border in the middle of the night when he claims he was stopped trying to import a 6-litre sports car. He claims he intended to drive through theSonoran Desert to Mexico City, but Mexico at the time had a protectionist auto industry, making foreign vehicle imports illegal to all but tourists. Pierre succeeded in crossing with the car but found his papers cancelled by the time he reached Mexico City some 18 hours later. The border crossing at Reynosa is described in Pierre's novelVernon God Little, as is the journey by road from the border.
Pierre asserts that, of the following years, nine were spent in adrug-induced haze, culminating with a stay in Australia where he finally collapsed. He described this period of his life in an interview given on the Australian television showEnough Rope withAndrew Denton in 2006:
I was lucky enough to be in Australia at the time, having come back to try my luck. The support network was fantastic. There's immediately the safety net under you here, which, in the rest of the world I wouldn't have survived, definitely. But, here, I was taken into therapy, where they told me that ... I was in the grip of bad psychology, and that this rabbit was never going to come out of the hat and I should get used to the idea, which was what I needed at the time.[5]
During his twenties, he had been involved in a film production to explore the fall of theAztec Empire and follow trails to the remains ofAztec EmperorMoctezuma, and possibly to his lost treasure, the whereabouts of which remains one of Mexico's great mysteries.
During the 1990s, he wrote his first novel whilst living inBalham, south London, finally agreeing a publication deal withFaber & Faber on 11 September 2001. In the following weeks, he relocated toCounty Leitrim, Ireland, where he began work on a second novel. The Man Booker Prize comes with a monetary award of£50,000. Upon being notified of his victory, Pierre said that the money would go part way toward paying off the debts incurred in his 20s when psychological issues and drug abuse were driving forces. The letters in his pen name stand for "Dirty but clean" in reference to his former hardships.[6][7][8][1]
In 2005 DBC Pierre revisited the Mexico of his youth to finally explore and document the downfall of theAztecs. In this revealingChannel 4 documentary he revisits the Aztecs' epic tale of decline and conquest.The Last Aztec, part historical film and part road movie, was aired in 2006 and follows Pierre as he traces the advance of the Spanishconquistadors toward the Aztec capital. It also picks up the threads he had intended to pursue in his ill-fated production of years earlier, centring on the wizards and witches of anOtomi culture in a remote valley in theSierra Madre mountains of central Mexico.
In 2007 his first novel,Vernon God Little, was adapted byTanya Ronder for the London stage. It was directed byRufus Norris at theYoung Vic from 27 April – 9 June. To date, the work has been translated in more than 40 countries worldwide and produced as a play by at least four theatre companies.
In 2009, he donated the short story "Suddenly Dr Cox" to Oxfam'sOx-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Pierre's story was published in theAir collection.[9] He is also a contributor to the 2009 rockbiography onThe TriffidsVagabond Holes: David McComb and the Triffids, edited by Australian academicsNiall Lucy and Chris Coughran.[10]
