The Sellout

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationshipand the holy grail of racial equality the black Chinese restaurant.

Born in the agrarian "ghetto" of Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fuelled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court. (From Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

The Selloutwon the 2016 Man Booker Prize and 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction.

Paul Beatty is an American poet and novelist. His other books include the novelsThe White Boy Shuffle,TuffandSlumberlandand the poetry collectionsBig Bank Take Little BankandJoker, Joker, Deuce.WhenThe Selloutwon the Booker Prize,Paul Beatty was the first American writer to receive the award.

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From the book

Interviews with Paul Beatty

Writers and Company51:38Paul Beatty in conversation with Eleanor Wachtel (2016)

The American novelist and poet discusses his novel, The Sellout.