Patrick deWitt

Patrick deWitt is a Canadian-American novelist born on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. He is best known for The Sisters Brothers (2011), a darkly comic Western novel about two hired-gun brothers travelling to California during the Gold Rush, which won the Governor General's Literary Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The Sisters Brothers was adapted into a 2018 film directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly. His other novels include Ablutions (2009), Undermajordomo Minor (2015), French Exit (2018), and The Librarianist (2023). French Exit was adapted into a 2020 film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. deWitt's fiction is characterised by its darkly comic sensibility, precise prose, and a fascination with morally ambiguous characters navigating absurd or violent circumstances. He has lived in Portland, Oregon, and is considered one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary North American fiction.