Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, a stinging satire of race and class in the US that has drawn comparisons to Richard Pryor and Mark Twain, won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday — the first time an American has taken the prestigious fiction award.
Judges said Beatty’s provocative book was a satire to rank with the classics, and as timely as the evening news.
Historian Amanda Foreman, who chaired the judging panel, said the book “plunges into the heart of contemporary American society, and with absolutely savage wit — the kind I haven’t seen since [Jonathan] Swift or Twain.”
The Sellout is set in a run-down Los Angeles suburb called Dickens, where the residents include the last survivor of the Little Rascals and the book’s narrator, Bonbon, an African-American man on trial at the US Supreme Court for attempting to reinstate slavery and racial segregation.
The book has been likened to the comedy of Pryor and Chris Rock, and Beatty goes where many authors fear to tread. Racial stereotypes, offensive speech and police killings of black men are all subject to his scathing eye.
Beatty acknowledged that The Sellout was a hard book — both to read and to write — and would push readers out of their comfort zone.
“I knew people could misread the book really easily,” he told reporters. “I think people get caught up in certain words and their brains lock, certain ideas and their brains lock.”
Beatty was awarded the £50,000 (US$61,000) prize by Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, at a black-tie ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall.
“I don’t want to get all dramatic, like writing saved my life, but writing’s given me a life,” said 54-year-old Beatty, who has written three other novels.
“I’m just trying to create space for myself — hopefully that creates space for others,” the visibly emotional author said as he accepted the prize.
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