Beatty 1st US Booker Prize winner – ‘The Sellout’ biting satire on race

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LONDON, Oct 26, (Agencies): Paul Beatty was on Tuesday named as the first American to win the prestigious Man Booker fiction prize, for “The Sellout”, a biting satire on race relations in the United States.

The narrator of “The Sellout”, an African-American called “Bonbon” tries to put his Californian town back on the map, from which it has been officially removed, by re-introducing slavery and segregation in its high school.

The 289-page novel begins with “Bonbon” facing a hearing in the Supreme Court, looking back over the events that led up to that point.

The language is uncompromising and may offend some readers. So might some of the content — one old black film actor asks to become Bonbon’s slave — as Beatty lampoons racial stereotypes. The protagonist’s father is unjustly shot by police.

“This is a hard book. It was hard for me to write, it’s hard to read,” said a tearful Beatty immediately after winning the award at a ceremony at London’s historic Guildhall.

Gratifying

“For me, it’s just really gratifying that something that’s important to me is also important for other people,” he later told a news conference.

Chair of the five judges for the 50,000 pound ($60,900) prize Amanda Foreman said “The Sellout” had been a unanimous choice, reached after a meeting lasting some four hours.

“It plunges into the heart of contemporary American society with absolutely savage wit of the kind I haven’t seen since Swift or Twain,” she said.

“It manages to eviscerate every social nuance, every sacred cow, while making us laugh and also making us wince … It is really a novel for our times.”

Asked about the language, Foreman said, “Paul Beatty has said being offended is not an emotion. That’s his answer to the reader,” Foreman said.

“The Sellout” is 54-year-old Beatty’s fourth novel. He has also edited an anthology of African-American humour.

It was publisher Oneworld’s second Man Booker victory after winning the 2015 prize for “A Brief History of Seven Killings” by Jamaican Marlon James.

Beatty said he would not have written the book had his partner not persuaded him to apply for a grant that allowed him time to complete the book.

“I don’t like writing,” he said. “I’m a perfectionist in some ways and I get easily disgruntled and discouraged with what I’m doing.”

Impact

Apart from the 50,000 pound prize, each of the six shortlisted authors wins 2,500 pounds ($3,045) winning the Man Booker can have a major impact on a writer’s sales and readership. James told Reuters recently that winning the prize can have a “seismic” impact.

In its 48-year history, the prize has gone to authors including Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood. Three years ago the rules were changed to cover any novel written in English, regardless of the writer’s nationality, and published in Britain. Previously it was confined largely to authors from the Commonwealth.

Since January, the judges have read 155 novels before whittling the pile down to a “longlist” of 13 then a shortlist of six.

This year’s shortlist comprised works by two Britons, a Briton born in Canada, a Canadian and two Americans.

Deborah Levy, whose “Hot Milk” was in the final six this year, has been on the shortlist before, while Ottessa Moshfegh’s “Eileen” was her debut novel.

Also:

NEW YORK: Colson Whitehead’s novel, “The Underground Railroad,” is up for another literary award, this one presented by the American Library Association.

Whitehead’s historical saga about an escaped slave, already a contender for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize, is one of three finalists for the $5,000 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. The other fiction nominees are Michael Chabon’s “Moonglow” and Zadie Smith’s “Swing Time.”

Finalists for the nonfiction prize, also worth $5,000, are Patricia Bell-Scott’s “The Firebrand and the First Lady,” Patrick Phillips’ “Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America” and Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.”

Winners will be announced Jan 22 at the association’s midwinter meeting in Atlanta.

NEW YORK: Veronica Roth wants the tour for her sci-fi/fantasy novel “Carve the Mark” to be a little like the book itself, a “sojourn” defined by “exploration and curiosity.”

“(W)ith each stop on the tour, my intention is to learn about the cities I’m traveling to,” the Chicago-based author best known for her multimillion-selling “Divergent” series told The Associated Press recently. “I’m taking recommendations from the locals themselves, via social media, and documenting the experiences as I go! It’s easy to get to a point, on a book tour, where you don’t even remember which time zone you’re in. But I’m trying to become a more curious person and ‘sojourning’ is a way to honor that.”

Roth’s book comes out in mid-January and HarperCollins told The Associated Press on Wednesday that she will visit 10 cities, starting in New York on Jan. 17 and continuing with stops ranging from Glencoe, Illinois to Katy, Texas. Roth expects an enthusiastic, but calmer reception than when she promoted the last of the “Divergent” books, “Allegiant,” and was often confronted by fans worked up over the surprising (and tragic) plot twist at the end.

“A few people were upset, others were angry. A few leaned in and whispered something supportive like it was a secret. All of it was so emotional for me!” she recalls. “But I’ll never forget how awesome and kind most readers were; my Irish fans compiled a book of very sweet, reassuring letters, telling me what the series had meant to them. I still have it in my office.

“That tour was intense because all the varied reactions were so raw and fresh, but there was something lovely about it, too— something communal.”

“Carve the Mark” is the first of two planned volumes. It’s being billed by the publisher as “Romeo and Juliet meets Mortal Combat in space,” and the book will have some of the themes known to “Divergent” readers, whether warring societies or a determined young heroine. Roth says that she was able to push aside any pressure she might have felt about following “Divergent.”

“It was a kind of special experience with this story,” she says. “It’s pretty normal in the course of the editing process to get tired of a story. But I knew this was the right one and felt a lot of joy in creating this big expanse of planets. It all felt very natural. The action and some of the friendships will feel familiar to my readers but it’s definitely a new world and a big new challenge.”

 

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