The Sellout

13,90 

by Paul Beatty

A biting satire about a young man’s isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game.

Description

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.

Fueled 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.

A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent)

‘Outrageous, hilarious and profound.’ Simon Schama, Financial Times
‘The longer you stare at Beatty’s pages, the smarter you’ll get.’ Guardian
‘The most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I’ve read.’ New York Times

Additional information

Book Condition

New

Cover

Paperback

Size

Length: 288 pages
Dimensions: 195x126x27 mm

Genre

Fiction, Contemporary, Humor, Literary Fiction

Published

2017 by Oneworld Publications. First published March 3, 2015

Awards

Booker Prize (2016),
Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize Nominee for Comic Fiction (2016),
National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2015),
Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee for Fiction (2016),
The Rooster — The Morning News Tournament of Books (2016),
Dublin Literary Award Nominee (2017)