The way I've learnt things in life, and my viewpoints, have always been from across different borders, writes SINÉAD GLEESON

‘I SERIOUSLY BELIEVE we have lost the ability and interest to communicate subtleties. It peaked some time in the 19th century and has been in decline ever since.”

DBC Pierre, aka Peter Finlay, is probably aware how ironic his use of the word subtleties is. Here is a writer whose frenetic debut, Vernon God Little, thumbed its nose at that very notion and whose new novel, Lights Out in Wonderland, is equally irreverent – and not just because of its sex scene in a fish tank containing a live octopus. It's a set-piece critics have honed in on, but it lurks in a broad story about money, recession and addiction. It's also an unashamed allegory, examining our current economic situation, the "can falling down empty" to earth.

“I started writing a story about economic chaos in 2006, before any of this happened, but it was clear that we were headed that way. I only finished it in March when we had already suffered 18 months of dismay, so I got to see it coming, watch it happen and taste the dismay. We genuinely live in the richest time of human history. There is more wealth in the world than ever before, but it’s concentrated in a few individuals. It’s the defining thread of our time.”

Lights Out in Wonderlandtells the story of Gabriel Brockwell, who informs us in the opening pages that he intends to kill himself. Just not right away. Instead, he goes on a peripatetic bender that takes him from London to Japan and Berlin. It is picaresque, racing along at an appropriately amphetamine-fuelled pace.

Pierre is sipping water and eating an elaborate cupcake in a Dublin hotel and considering the idea that the reality we live in now is more of a hyper-reality.

“It’s impossible to satirise anything anymore. The traditional form of the novel has been outlived by the dynamics of everyday life, so it’s very hard for a novel – in its structure – to reflect how a life moves, so this book doesn’t have a traditional structure. A novel is a great thing and it won’t disappear, but the way we tell stories will change. It’s still a beautiful form, in the way a fable is, but it’s now more of a very visible fiction and its ability to reflect contemporary life is definitely declining. I was conscious of having to move away from that and to find some new way to move through a work of 300-odd pages that didn’t try and add . . .” He interrupts himself.

“See, my argument with the novel is that a lot of discipline is expended on plausibility and plausibility is no longer a factor in modern life. It’s great to get sucked into a story, but in terms of writing something that is actual and contemporary . . . I think plausibility would be dishonest. There is none around us anymore.”

Throughout the conversation we return to the economy, Nama and Anglo; Pierre thinks the core of the book is the failure of free market capitalism. “I fear that underneath all the news that’s coming out, things are much worse.”

Against the backdrop of the boom, there has been a decadence and consumerism that got out of hand. While Pierre is writing about what he sees as real events and people, there is some autobiographical experience to draw on. His own wild years of partying have been well-documented and he gamely talks about them, almost out of obligation. A newer obsession is food as pornography, and one of the book’s main characters, Smuts, is a chef, acclaimed for his fieriness as much as his imagination. Various recipes appear in the pages – kiwi and hummingbird broth, confit of koala leg – that are outlandish and indicative of a new kind of gluttony. In Pierre’s work, as in his life, there is an unsettled feeling, of characters always on the brink of moving on.

“Well, there’s a lot to run away from and some of my characters are running away from themselves. It’s a very human thing to do. We live in a culture of running away, of grand escapism and distraction. It suits corporations for us to be this way – heaven forbid we’d come to our senses and say, ‘I don’t actually need this stuff’ – but escapism and decadence go hand in hand for me. I’m a running character myself, and it’s an interesting thing because there are so many different ways to run, through drugs, through places, but eventually life catches up with you.”

When Pierre’s own life did just that, he moved to rural Leitrim. Two years later, when he won the Man Booker Prize, scores of journalists arrived in his remote corner of the county to seek him out. Pierre was in London, but his neighbour toyed with the press. “He took some pleasure in sending them round the mountainside and keeping them off the trail. There was also a makeshift media centre in the post office in Aughnasheelan. Everyone had a part in it. Before I won, no one here knew who I was, and when I did – and it’s one of the things I love about Ireland – there was zero change in attitude towards me. It’s all ‘ah yer man’ or ‘the writer fella’. They took me as I came and it’s something very special. People say to me all the time that I must find the landscape inspiring, but it’s more about the space and quietness.”

All of his books have spanned the globe in their settings, and even though Pierre has physically settled down in one place, its possible that his books may never have that central, local setting. “I like the idea,” he says, “but it’s not a conscious decision that my books leap around. The way I’ve learnt things in life, and my viewpoints, have always been from across different borders.”

In the week that we meet, the Man Booker shortlist is announced and it's seven years since he won for his debut, Vernon God Little. It's often said to be a curse to win such a big prize early in your career – what's his take?

“I think I’ve recovered. I’m a recovered Booker winner [laughs], it’s like alcoholism. It’s a curse for writing, but not for being published. For the really important stuff it was hard to get over, and not least because it made the book profitable, which means you get a lot of commercial pressure. In the long run, it was good, though, and it gave me a chance to keep writing.”

For now, he's sticking with the "Dirty But Clean" monicker, because he says it allows him to be more critical of his work. Before Lights Out in Wonderland, he had started another book that he wasn't ready to give to his publisher, which he plans to return to. Lights Out in Wonderlandis an endpoint in more than one way because he views his novels to date as a "loose trilogy".

“I wanted them to be a portrait of the first decade of the millennium. We’re in an interesting time, in between ideological eras. We’ve let communism collapse, we’ve seen the fatal flaws in free market capitalism. We’re in between cycles and the three works observe different questions in a dark way. I wanted to look at mass media, the movement of people and free market capitalism. I think I’ve now drawn a line under that and gotten it out of my system. Maybe now I’ll write lovely things about steam trains and butterflies.”

Lights Out in Wonderlandby DBC Pierre is published by Faber