'A Novel For Our Times' Paul Beatty's Man Booker Winner The Sellout

We're pleased to present the 2016 Man Booker Prize winner, available in all audio formats. Click here to order now.

Paul Beatty’s The Sellout was named the winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize at the event in London on the 25th of October. Beatty, a 54-year-old New Yorker, is the first American author to win the prize in its 48 year history. The Sellout is Beatty’s fourth novel and he also written two books of poetry. 

Paul is the second black writer in a row to win the prize, after last years' winner Marlon James.

Chair of judges, Amanda said: "The Sellout is a novel for our times. A tirelessly inventive modern satire, its humour disguises a radical seriousness. Paul Beatty slays sacred cows with abandon and takes aim at racial and political taboos with wit, verve and a snarl." Beatty's work has been compared to Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift.

Born in Dickens, 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 his father's memoir will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed, he discovers there never was a memoir. Fuelled by despair, he sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

" An eccentric mix of Swiftian satire and observational comedy."

OLIVIA WILLIAMS, Man Booker 2016 Judge

 

We're pleased to present the 2016 Man Booker Prize winner, available in all audio formats. Click here to order now.

Written by

Gizzle Bautista -
[email protected]

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