Concrete Playground

This Tuesday DBC Pierre will be at the Oxford Art Factory promoting his new book Lights Out In Wonderland, supported by Gareth Liddard from The Drones (who is amazing, for lack of a better superlative). In 2003 Pierre won the Booker Prize for his debut novel, Vernon God Little, which is fairly incredible when you think about it. Previous winners have included heavyweights like J.M Coetzee for Disgrace and Australia's very own adorable garden gnome, Thomas Keneally, for Schindler's Ark.

Vernon God Little was the story of an amoral 15-year-old boy who rides around Texas on a dinky bike eating Bar-B-Chew ribs and daydreaming of panty tangs, who gets caught up in the mass hysteria of a school shooting. It has the ease, humour and scope of great American novels like Catcher in the Rye and Confederacy of Dunces. Plus Pierre's personal life — a wasted youth of drugs, fraud and petty crime — lent him a very press friendly sense of rock and roll glamour.

His follow-up made less of a splash, but his latest novel Lights Out In Wonderland was just described by the Guardian as "an artful shout of protest from a soul on fire". So I guess he's back on form.

To win one of two double passes to see DBC Pierre tonight, head to our Facebook page.