Black comedy debut takes Wodehouse

A first novel satirising American gun culture has beaten Zadie Smith's Autograph Man and Yann Martel's Booker-winning Life of Pi to the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing.

DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little is set in white trash Texas. Its eponymous hapless hero is a 15-year-old whose best friend has just massacred 16 of his classmates before turning the gun on himself. Vernon is left to face the wrath of the local community, becoming their scapegoat for the crime.

The book tackles topical issues such as America's problem with Columbine-style shootings, its obsession with capital punishment and the power of Jerry Springer-style media, but it does so in a scabrously funny fashion.

It was described by judge James Naughtie as "a tour de force of a certain kind of raucous, coruscating humour, a sort of white trash Gone with the Wind version of the Simpsons with all the dirty bits left in... a comic writer of talent."

Pierre, 41, was born in Australia and brought up in America and Mexico. He wrote his winning novel in Balham, south London and is currently working on his second novel in County Leitrim. He attributes his ear for vernacular dialogue to his itinerant lifestyle while growing up and the continual feeling of being an outsider.

The Wodehouse prize, which is now in its fourth year, is awarded to the book that best encapsulates the tradition of Wodehouse, which celebrates both satire and the comedy of manners. The previous winners are Howard Jacobson, Jonathan Coe and Michael Frayn.

DBC Pierre wins a Gloucestershire Old Spot sow - to be renamed Vernon God Little after his winning novel - a case of Bollinger Grande Année vintage champagne and a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée.

The other titles shortlisted for the prize were Yann Martel's Life of Pi, Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man, I Don'tKnow How She Does It by Allison Pearson, India Knight's Don' t You Want Me, and Dot in the Universe by Lucy Ellman.