**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.

Aicha 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 Celeste thinks of her plan.

Celeste wants Aicha 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 Anais, 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

About the Author
VIRGINIE DESPENTES is a writer and filmmaker. Her first novel, Baise-Moi was published in 1992 and adapted for film in 2000. She is the author of over fifteen further novels, including Apocalypse Baby (2010) and Bye Bye Blondie (2004), and the autobiographical work, King Kong Theory (2006). She won the Prix de Flore in 1998 forLes Jolies Choses, the 2010 Prix Renaudot for Apocalypse Baby and Vernon Subutex One won the Prix Anais Nin in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International in 2018.

Reviews
Alternative Paris at its most compassionate, angry and funny . . . Spiky rants on the sick state of bourgeois society enliven and provoke - it's all tres cool * The Sunday Times, "Best books of the last five years" *
Funny, irreverent and scathing * Guardian *
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 -- ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN * author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine *
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 * 1843 *
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 * Irish Times *
Truthful, brash, brilliant and shocking. I was both appalled and mesmerised -- Victoria Hislop * The Week *
Virginie Despentes Vernon Subutex trilogy savages contemporary life . . . Vernon Subutex Two is equally good and is my book of the year * The Sunday Times, "Best Books of 2018" *
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 -- Nell Zink * Bustle, "Best Books of the 2010s" *
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. * Wall Street Journal *
A satire on fading punk politics . . . Despentes at her most compassionate, and hopeful * The White Review *
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 * The Millions *
A sexed-up epic * Publisher's Weekly, starred review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780857055835
Author Virginie Despentes
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint MacLehose Press
Publisher Quercus Publishing
Weight(grams) 240g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 28mm