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| Paul Beatty (photo: Hanna Assouline) |
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Last night in London, Paul Beatty won the £50,000 (about $60,953) Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel The Sellout, becoming the first American author to win the award in its 48-year history. U.S. authors became eligible in 2014. In March, The Sellout (FSG hardcover; Picador paperback) won this year's National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
Beatty "was overcome by emotion as he accepted the award," the Guardian reported. He told the audience: "I don't want to get all dramatic, like writing saved my life... but writing has given me a life." The Guardian added that Beatty "did not call his book a satire, he said, but was happy for it be described that way."
Chair of judges Amanda Foreman commented: "Fiction should not be comfortable. The truth is rarely pretty and this is a book that nails the reader to the cross with cheerful abandon... that is why the novel works.... While you're being nailed, you're being tickled. It is highwire act which he pulls off with tremendous verve and energy and confidence. He never once lets up or pulls his punches. This is somebody writing at the top of their game."
Calling the winning title a "novel for our times," particularly in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, Foreman observed that The Sellout "is one of those very rare books: which is able to take satire, which is a very difficult subject and not always done well, and plunges it into the heart of contemporary American society with a savage wit of the kind I haven't seen since Swift or Twain. It manages to eviscerate every social taboo and politically correct nuance, every sacred cow. While making us laugh, it also makes us wince. It is both funny and painful at the same time."
Frances Gertler, Web editor at Foyles bookshops, described The Sellout as brave and funny: "It takes a bit of getting into but once there, you don't want to leave. A smart satire with a memorable narrator."