Description
Book Synopsis
A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent)
A LAUGH-OUT-LOUD SATIRE ABOUT RACE, CLASS AND INEQUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA, BY A LITERARY GENIUS AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME
Winner of the Man Booker Prize, 2016
In his trademark absurdist style, Paul Beatty will make you laugh and cry in this outrageous – and outrageously entertaining – indictment of our time.
Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged psychological studies. He is told that this work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, he discovers there never was a memoir. All that’s left is a bill for a drive-thru funeral.
What’s more, Dickens has literally been wiped off the map to save California from further embarrassment. Fuelled by despair, the narrator sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school. The results will take him from Dickens to the Supreme Court, in the trial of the century.
‘Outrageous, hilarious and profound.’ Simon Schama, Financial Times
‘The longer you stare at Beatty’s pages, the smarter you’ll get.’ Guardian
‘The most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I’ve read.’ New York Times
Trade Review‘Outrageous, hilarious and profound… It takes a whole other level of sheer audacity to expose atrocious things through the play of wit.’ FT
‘The most caustic and the most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I’ve read in at least a decade... The riffs don’t stop coming in this landmark and deeply aware comic novel.' New York Times
‘A book of coruscating satire and the darkest humour whose bilious narrative voice leaves you at once enthralled and exhausted’. Observer, Best Books of 2016
‘A hilarious, anger-fuelled cadenza that feels as if it were written in one manic burst’. Mark Haddon, Observer, Best Books of 2016
‘Brilliant. Amazing. Like demented angels wrote it.’ Sarah Silverman
‘A breathtakingly confrontational American race satire with a big laugh and a gasp on every page’. Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
‘One of the few books of recent years that has made me choke with laughter’. Daily Mail, Best Books of 2016
‘A compelling act of demonstrative rhetoric, a masterful show of verbal energy that questions just how far equality has come and where it hopes to go’. New Statesman
‘It will make you laugh, but most of all it will make you think.’ The Sunday Times
‘Beatty’s sharp humour challenges pieties from all sides…Intelligent…entertaining…exhilarating’. Daily Telegraph
‘Bitterly funny and finely layered…[The Sellout] seems even more essential after the racially demarcated “whitelash” of Donald Trump’s victory.’ New Statesman, Books of the Year 2016
'[An] outrageous, riff-strewn satire on race in America…[The Sellout] combines effervescent comedy and stinging critique, but its most arresting quality is the lively humanity of its characters.’ The New Yorker
'Brutal and full of very dark humour, it tells us so much about the state of American race relations and, by extension, our attitude to colonialism and black history. Powerful stuff.' Kit de Waal
‘Hilariously caustic.’ Rolling Stone
‘There’s satire and then there’s satire, and without question Paul Beatty’s caustic third novel, The Sellout, definitely falls into the latter category…brutally honest and very funny’. Independent
