Sellout

A Novel

No cover

Paul Beatty: Sellout (2021, Picador)

304 pages

English language

Published Feb. 11, 2021 by Picador.

ISBN:
978-1-250-80824-0
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5 stars (2 reviews)

The Sellout is a 2015 novel by Paul Beatty published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the UK by Oneworld Publications in 2016. The novel takes place in and around Los Angeles, California, and muses about the state of racial relations in the U.S. today. In October 2016, it won the Booker Prize, making Beatty the first US writer to win that award.

10 editions

Review of 'The Sellout' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This funny, provocative and very well-written book is built around a bold proposition - to re-introduce slavery and segregation to America in order to 'save' the ghettoised black community - that appears absurd, and certainly offensive. You assume this is an extreme satire, where the conceit is a 'imagine if' scenario that is too daft to be real. Yet as you read further, you start to sympathise with the protagonist's plan. Indeed, one even starts to see the genius of the idea, even though it is also a repellent proposition. Great books like this manage to change the way you think amount a topic, despite one's own resistance, it facilitates the way in which one can think the unthinkable.
It is also a great read and laugh out loud funny. I got through it in two long haul flights, and earned stern glances from other passengers as a chuckled and …

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rated it

5 stars

Subjects

  • Los angeles (calif.), fiction
  • African americans, fiction
  • Fathers and sons, fiction
  • Fiction, satire