Despite an imperfect ending, what makes the novel a pleasure to read is the chaotic force of Gabriel’s narration. He describes himself as “Ebenezer Scrooge on a moral tour of Culture Present” and indeed he seems possessed by contradictory spirits. At times he is the raving poet, erupting in hallucinatory similes, “this is a Salvador Dali girl, someone to fold over the branch of a tree.” At other times, he takes on the role of the gad fly, lecturing on social theory:

History’s best thinkers eventually concluded that our flaws were too powerful to trust with freedom. Thus we’ve been groomed as hamsters in a wheel that benefits a laughing few. No more great works will be accomplished under the regime, because beauty is not democratic or profitable.

It is Gabriel’s love for the excess he despises that ultimately captures the spirit of our times.

Similarities aside, however, "Lights Out in Wonderland" stands emphatically on its own. If Gabriel is reminiscent of anyone, it's Ignatius J. Reilly, the picaresque antihero of John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," or Eddie Coffin, the philosopher-turned-bank robber at the center of Tibor Fischer's "The Thought Gang." Like them, he is an outsider who not so much reflects the world as he remakes it, spinning with such absurdist force that he transforms the lives of anyone who draws close to his gravitational field. And like themhe is a bit of a bumbler — or not a bumbler exactly but more of a holy fool.

Among the triumphs of the novel is that it lets us know more about the character than he knows about himself, revealing his frantic machinations not as those of a man intent on dying but of one who wants to live.

“Lights Out in Wonderland” isn’t perfect — it builds up to an ending that doesn’t fully discharge — but it’s a terrific one-man show. Gabriel is the eloquent misanthrope Pierre has been looking for all along, good company even if you dislike him, gracefully moving from screed to story without missing a beat. He’s a man who holds a mirror up to a suicidal society and sees himself, a genuine product of his time.

In these moments of grandiose awfulness, Pierre’s writing is triumphant. The depravity and degradation of modern life is the author’s recurring theme, but in Lights Out in Wonderland, dull characters distract from an otherwise entertaining journey through capitalist dystopias, where no matter which city you’re in, “Starbucks napkins tumble and scud in the wind.”

We met on a clear cold day that promised spring and sat on a bar’s flat roof in North London. DBC Pierre drinks English Breakfast tea throughout the interview (he was speaking that evening to 10,000 people in Trafalgar Square). A multi-national, troubled upbringing is evident in Pierre’s entertainingly itinerant accent and acronymic pseudonym (Dirty But Clean, apparently). Nevertheless, he considers himself English (we talk about cricket; take note of the tea drinking; and he refers to the English populace in the first person plural), and his attitudes to art are those of an Englishman in the mould of Hogarth or Huxley. The restraint evident in his choice of tea does not, incidentally, extend to his heroic consumption of unevenly packed roll-up cigarettes. He is generous with his answers and good company throughout.

At 7,500 words strong and encompassing 66 titles, this is the only second-half of 2011 book preview you will ever need.

List includes: Lights Out in Wonderland by DBC Pierre, Townie by Andre Dubus III, and Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell.