D.B.C. Pierre is the pen-name of the Australian-born writer Peter Warren Finlay (born 1961). The "DBC" part of his nom-de-plume (normally so written, without punctuation) stands for "Dirty But Clean".
Pierre was awarded the Booker Prize for fiction on 14 October 2003 for his novel Vernon God Little. He is the third Australian to be so honored, although he has told the British press that he prefers to consider himself a Mexican.
He was brought up in Mexico City in the bosom of an extremely wealthy family. He enjoyed a comfortable and privileged childhood, but his situation took a turn for the worse when his father fell ill in his sixteenth year and, shortly afterwards, Mexican President José López Portillo issued a decree nationalizing the country's banking system. Pierre has called this event, which cost his family its fortune, "the beginning of his problems".
Of the ensuing years, by his own admission, nine were spent in a drug-induced haze. He was involved in various schemes of dubious legality and scanter profitablility, including one aimed at locating the lost gold of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma. He has also confessed to once selling a house on behalf of his best friend, but then neglecting to hand over the proceeds in order to finance his drug habit.
For most of the 1990s, he lived as a recluse – in his own words, "repolarizing and deconstructing himself" while listening to Russian orchestral music. He found work as a cartoonist and a designer and, in 2000, relocated to Ireland, where he wrote his debut novel.
The Booker Prize comes with a monetary award of GBP 50,000. Upon being notified of his victory, Pierre said that the money would go a third of the way toward paying off his debts.
