Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vernon Subutex 1 | 2017 | Virginie Despentes | Buy |
| 2 | Vernon Subutex 2 | 2018 | Virginie Despentes | Buy |
| 3 | Vernon Trodon, 3 | 2017 | Virginie Despentes | N/A |
| 4 | Vernon Subutex 3 | 2020 | Virginie Despentes | Buy |
Vernon Subutex opens on a man losing his footing. Vernon ran a record shop in Paris for years — the kind of shop that anchored a neighborhood’s cultural life — and when streaming and downloads kill it, he finds himself not just unemployed but homeless, working through his address book and sleeping on friends’ sofas as each host’s patience runs out. The first volume tracks his descent while building a wide cast: every person who takes Vernon in carries their own story, and those stories collectively span the entirety of French society.
By the second and third volumes the narrative has expanded to include a jihadist, a far-right agitator, aging musicians, film industry women navigating exploitation, and a charismatic figure with plans for the mysterious VHS tapes Vernon carries — recordings of a now-dead rock legend whose footage may be worth considerable money. The trilogy is interested in who French society left behind: the generation that believed in music and political resistance as alternatives to capital, and what happened when capital won anyway.
The first volume was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Frank Wynne’s translations carry Despentes’s vernacular voice cleanly: blunt, sardonic, and free of literary ornamentation that might have softened the social edges.