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The Man Booker Prize 2003

DBC Pierre 2003
Winner
Shortlist
Longlist

With Vernon God Little, DBC ‘Dirty But Clean’ Pierre brings a heady whiff of the bad boy, a quirky nom-de-plume, and a winner’s soul-cleansing act of contrition to the prize.

The rackety personal history of DBC Pierre – real name Peter Warren Finlay – was the main talking point in the aftermath of his win, rather than the merits of his novel. The itinerant Australian admitted that he had spent the best part of his twenties in drug-induced catalepsy, financed by fleecing his friends.

He said a large part of the £50,000 would go to paying off those debts. Unsurprisingly, his novel, about a young Texas boy in trouble with the law, has the smack of authenticity.
 

Vernon God Little
Vernon God Little

Vernon God Little

Winner of The Booker Prize 2003

Published by
Faber & Faber
In DBC Pierre’s darkly comic debut novel, an acerbic, foul-mouthed 15-year-old boy goes on the run after a mass shooting at his Texas high school

The shortlist

Brick Lane
An epic yet intimate novel set in the Asian community in London’s East End, full of warm humour and strikingly imagined by Monica Ali
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood projects us into a less-than-brave new world, an outlandish yet wholly believable space populated by a cast of memorable characters
The Good Doctor
Damon Galgut’s powerful tale of an unlikely friendship in an uneasy time, set in a dilapidated rural hospital in post-apartheid South Africa
Notes on a Scandal
When a lonely schoolteacher writes an account of her friend’s affair, she reveals more than she intends in Zoë Heller’s gripping psychological drama
Vernon God Little
Prize winner
In DBC Pierre’s darkly comic debut novel, an acerbic, foul-mouthed 15-year-old boy goes on the run after a mass shooting at his Texas high school

The longlist

The 2003 judges

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