Born in Australia, DBC Pierre spent a lavish upbringing in Mexico learning the tools of his undoing. He undid himself on three continents during his twenties, spending his thirties in London and the West Indies. Having plied a piecemeal trade since childhood as designer, photographer, film-maker and cartoonist, his first novel, Vernon God Little, erupted just before his fortieth birthday. It went on to win the MAN Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Bollinger Everyman Woodhouse Award for Comic Writing in 2003. His second novel, Ludmila's Broken English, was published in 2006. He lives in County Leitrim, Ireland.