DBC Pierre exploded onto the international literary scene with Vernon God Little in 2003 – a fiendishly funny tale set in the ‘barbecue sauce capital of Texas’. With a vernacular mingling the profanity of South Park with the poetry of Rabelais, Pierre set a new precedent for contemporary novelists, testing the boundaries of the form and dividing critics.

Now, he has returned with Lights Out in Wonderland, a kaleidoscopic, angst-ridden journey with disaffected aesthete, Gabriel. Recently returned from a stint in an English psychiatric facility, Gabriel discovers his political activist friends have turned against him. He flees – ironically with activist funds in hand – in search of the ultimate bacchanalia, an odyssey which takes him to Japan and then Berlin, to new heights of licentiousness and debauchery in the underground chambers of Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport.

With the same laugh of despair, DBC Pierre has crafted a yarn that zings with political gravitas, casting a critical eye over contemporary Western society, revealing all its ills and foibles.

– Rebecca Starford