The Sellout by Paul Beatty Wins the Man Booker Prize

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Cover image for The Sellout by Paul BeattyPaul Beatty’s The Sellout (Oneworld) was named the winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize for Fiction at a black-tie dinner at London’s Guildhall on October 25.

Beatty, a 54-year-old New York resident born in Los Angeles, is the first American author to win the prize in its 48-year history. In addition to a prize of £50,000 and a trophy, Beatty received a designer-bound edition of his book and a further £2,500 for being shortlisted.

Since 2014, the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which was first awarded in 1969, has been open to writers of any nationality writing originally in English whose book is published in the U.K.

In The Sellout, a searing satire on race relations in contemporary America, narrator Bonbon is being tried by the Supreme Court for attempting to reinstate slavery and segregation in his Los Angeles neighborhood of Dickens.

A panel of five judges chose The Sellout from a pool of 155 books published in the U.K. between October 1, 2015, and September 30, 2016.

Photo of Man Booker Prize winner Paul Beatty
Photo courtesy of the Man Booker Prize

The Sellout is a novel for our times,” said Amanda Foreman, chair of the judging panel for 2016. “A tirelessly inventive modern satire, its humor 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.”

This is the second consecutive Man Booker Prize win for independent publisher Oneworld; Marlon James won for A Brief History of Seven Killings in 2015.

Beatty is the author of three other novels, Slumberland, Tuff, and The White Boy Shuffle, and two books of poetry, Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker, Deuce. He is also the editor of Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor.

The Sellout was published in the U.S. in March 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and was named the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in March 2016.

Booksellers should keep an eye out for a poster and Man Booker Prize-winner stickers in the November Red Box mailing.

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