**Sunday Times Best Books of 2018**
“Funny, irreverent and scathing” Guardian
“Virginie Despentes is a true original, a punk rock George Eliot” ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN, author of You Too Could Have a Body Like Mine
Rock star Alexandre Bleach might be dead, but he has a secret.
It’s a secret that concerns several people, but the only person who can unlock it is Vernon Subutex, former record shop proprietor turned homeless messiah and guru, last seen hallucinating and feverish on a bench in the parc des Buttes Chaumont.
Aïcha wants to know the truth behind the death of her mother, Vodka Satana. And if she finds the bastards responsible, she wants to make them pay, whatever Céleste thinks of her plan.
Céleste wants Aïcha to get a grip and stop hanging around with Subutex’s gang of disciples.
The Hyena wants to find the Bleach tapes. She wants to untangle her complicated feelings about Anaïs, her boss’ assistant. And speaking of her boss, she does not want Laurent Dopalet to discover how badly she has double-crossed him.
Laurent Dopalet wants the Hyena to find and destroy the Bleach tapes. He wants to forget he ever knew Vodka Satana. He wants people to stop graffitiing his apartment with ludicrous allegations. Above all, he wants people to understand: NONE OF THIS IS HIS FAULT.
THE SEQUEL TO VERNON SUBUTEX 1, SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2018.
Translated from the French by Frank Wynne
“Funny, irreverent and scathing” Guardian
“Virginie Despentes is a true original, a punk rock George Eliot” ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN, author of You Too Could Have a Body Like Mine
Rock star Alexandre Bleach might be dead, but he has a secret.
It’s a secret that concerns several people, but the only person who can unlock it is Vernon Subutex, former record shop proprietor turned homeless messiah and guru, last seen hallucinating and feverish on a bench in the parc des Buttes Chaumont.
Aïcha wants to know the truth behind the death of her mother, Vodka Satana. And if she finds the bastards responsible, she wants to make them pay, whatever Céleste thinks of her plan.
Céleste wants Aïcha to get a grip and stop hanging around with Subutex’s gang of disciples.
The Hyena wants to find the Bleach tapes. She wants to untangle her complicated feelings about Anaïs, her boss’ assistant. And speaking of her boss, she does not want Laurent Dopalet to discover how badly she has double-crossed him.
Laurent Dopalet wants the Hyena to find and destroy the Bleach tapes. He wants to forget he ever knew Vodka Satana. He wants people to stop graffitiing his apartment with ludicrous allegations. Above all, he wants people to understand: NONE OF THIS IS HIS FAULT.
THE SEQUEL TO VERNON SUBUTEX 1, SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2018.
Translated from the French by Frank Wynne
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
Vernon Subutex Two presents Paris in all its glory and its grime. Sharply translated by Frank Wynne, this is the best multi-volume fiction series since Elena Ferrante
Virginie Despentes continues her picaresque tour de force with the same driving energy sustained by vicious wit, exasperation, stark insight and compelling empathy . . . In her seething Paris of messed-up losers and relentless operators, Despentes exposes a universal society gone mad on greed, fear and ruthlessness
Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy is the zeitgeistiest thing I ever read . . . [It] has dupes and assholes and racists and the people they hate and a stunning diversity of internal monologues and trans true love. Like the last decade, it searches for a happy ending that isn't merely personal and can't find it . . . These novels with their depth and detail kick TV's sorry ass
It's bastards across the board in Virginie Despentes's brilliantly unshackled trilogy Vernon Subutex . . . What keeps you reading is the voice - acerbic, unconstrained, bitterly funny and, despite the book's intimations of enlightenment, perpetually pissed off.
Virginie Despentes is a true original, a punk rock George Eliot with a keen taste for the pitiable innards of her characters: no one else has her slyly penetrating eye, her spiky sense of humor, her razor wit that cuts like wire through the accumulated crud of our age's default thought patterns. In her masterful hands,Vernon Subutex becomes a droll, hilarious, insightful record of our unfortunate times
A sexed-up epic
Like William S. Burroughs updated for the age of WhatsApp, Vernon Subutex Two straps our current world to a chair and interrogates the hell out of it
A satire on fading punk politics . . . Despentes at her most compassionate, and hopeful
Virginie Despentes Vernon Subutex trilogy savages contemporary life . . . Vernon Subutex Two is equally good and is my book of the year
Alternative Paris at its most compassionate, angry and funny . . . Spiky rants on the sick state of bourgeois society enliven and provoke - it's all très cool
Truthful, brash, brilliant and shocking. I was both appalled and mesmerised
Funny, irreverent and scathing