Lights Out in Wonderland [Paperback]

'If any novelist can collate the killing irony of what is happening around us it is DBC Pierre ... Pierre shreds the pretentious sophistication and fake joyousness of our Michelin-starred palaces, driving them to the ultimate conclusions of hedonism with a ferocity worthy of de Sade ... As with the dextrous ventriloquism in Vernon God Little, Gabriel's living and very beautiful voice carries this convulsive novel ... This swollen, bruising novel needs to be defended as an artful shout of protest from a soul on fire, an ultimate call to sanity and to learn what has happened in our world, where "Profit won the game, but like an infection killed the host".' -- Alan Warner, Guardian >> 'He inspires delight and disgust, causing chaos to others while blithely partying. So begins an odyssey, as Gabriel himself terms it. The plot rests on getting Smuts out of a Japanese jail. There are, along the way, some set pieces of lunatic brilliance ... The exuberance coating the nihilistic blackness, the brilliantine shine of his classically pure prose bouncing against an adolescent two-fingers to society, all point to a novel of excellence and importance ... Its impact is undeniable. The whole tottering edifice of Wonderland has many doors. They may open onto wonders or terrors; either way, it s worth taking a look.' -- Daily Telegraph >> 'Precipitously drunken, pleasure-seeking narrative ... Pierre's writing is heady, reaching glorious heights of linguistic invention. He shows that he is just as adept at conjuring a sense of place - this time in Japan and Germany - as he was in his pitch perfect presentation of the Texan vernacular in his Booker-prize winning debut, Vernon God Little.' -- Independent >> 'Pierre's writing is extravagantly energetic.' -- Spectator >> 'Pierre lets rip with some truly lipsmacking prose.' -- Daily Mail >> ''If anyone was going to attempt a properly unhinged allegory of the excesses of modern capitalism and the financial crash, DBC Pierre was always the man most likely ... his sentences are toxic assets, often built on wild speculation; his metaphors complex derivatives that you love or hate for their indulgent bravado ... His writing falls somewhere in a spectrum between William Burroughs and JP Donleavy, a sort of narco-blarney. At its best it captures some of the rigorous circumlocution and comedy of Iain Sinclair in full rant mode. --Scotsman

>> 'It's great to see Pierre back on form with another hefty slab of outrageous black comedy: a stupendously over-the-top romp based on the excesses of 21st-century capitalism and all its orgiastic horror ... delivered in a narrative voice that is utterly compelling and always funny. Pierre repeatedly exposes the pretentiousness and self-importance of his targets, and he again proves himself adept at conjuring up place perfectly ... both Berlin and Tokyo emerge fully formed in the reader's mind ... Ultimately, it is Pierre's debunking of the capitalist dream, as well as celebrity culture and the empty posturing of fine dining, drinking and partying, that make this more than just a wild-eyed rumpus of a book ... [Lights Out in Wonderland is] a remarkably sharp and amusing tirade on the politics of excess, and an important book in these chastened times.' -- --Independent on Sunday

'DBC Pierre's first book, Vernon God Little, was brilliant. Lights Out is even better. It's a satirical middle finger up at the banal purgatory of modern life and a reckless manifesto for life ... At times he novel is more ridiculous than rapturous and more debauched than divine, but it is always beguiling ... Pierre proves that a book can be insightful and shocking as well as melancholic and wickedly funny. Only someone able to take the p*ss out of themselves and the world they live in so astutely could pull this off: irresistible.' -- Time Out >> 'Fans of DBC Pierre will hardly be disappointed ... Pierre is an eye-catching prose stylist.' -- Herald >>
'A rambunctious satire on capitalist excess ... it's great fun.' --Independent on Sunday --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

The spectacular third novel from DBC Pierre, one of the great fantastical storytellers of his generation.

Gabriel Brockwell, aesthete, poet, philosopher, disaffected twenty-something decadent, is thinking terminal. His philosophical enquiries, the abstractions he indulges, and how these relate to a life lived, all point in the same direction. His destination is Wonderland. The nature and style of the journey is all that's to be decided.

Taking in London, Tokyo, Berlin and the Galapagos Islands, Lights Out In Wonderland documents Gabriel Brockwell's remarkable global odyssey. Committed to the pursuit of pleasure and in search of the Bacchanal to obliterate all previous parties, Gabriel's adventure takes in a spell in rehab, a near-death experience with fugu ovaries, a sexual encounter with an octopus, and finally an orgiastic feast in the bowels of Berlin's majestic Tempelhof Airport. Along the way we see a character disintegrate and re-shape before our eyes.

Lights Out In Wonderland carries you through its many corridors of delight and horror on the back of Gabriel's voice, which is at once skeptical, idealistic, broken and optimistic. An allegorical banquet and a sly commentary on these End Times and the march towards insensate banality, DBC Pierre's third novel completes a loose trilogy of fictions, each of which stands alone as a joyful expression of the human spirit.

DBC Pierre lives in County Leitrim, Ireland. Vernon God Little, his debut novel, won the MAN Booker Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award. Ludmila's Broken English, his second, was published in 2006.