Beatty 1st American to win Booker
Paul Beatty has became the first US author to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout, which the novelist said should not be read as a “mono-directional” take on race.
The jury behind the world’s most prestigious English-language literary award said the novel was a “shocking and unexpectedly funny” portrayal of Mr Beatty’s native Los Angeles, using satire to explore racial equality in a fictional neighbourhood.
Mr Beatty said readers should think of the novel as a work of fiction rather than solely focusing on race.
“I tend to bristle when people say it’s black, it’s angry, it’s about race,” he told journalists after picking up the award at a glitzy black-tie ceremony in London’s historic Guildhall building on Tuesday.
“Hopefully it’s not so mono-directional. These labels are more malleable than we like to think about them,” the 54-year-old writer said.
Mr Beatty appeared overwhelmed when he took to the stage to receive the award from Prince Charles’s wife Camilla.
“I can’t tell you guys how long a journey this has been for me,” he said.
The jury said that through his “equally affectionate and bitterly ironic portrait of the city and its inhabitants, Paul Beatty dodges inherited views of race relations, solutions or assumptions”.
The author “presents through his beguilingly honest and well-intentioned hero an innocent’s view of his corrupt world”, the jurors added, bringing “the unendurable status quo of present day US race relations to an absurdist conclusion”.
The winner of the Man Booker receives £52,500, although the real prize is seen as the huge increase in sales seen after the announcement.
Columbus (US), Oct 26: Snubbing his Republican colleague and presidential nominee Donald Trump, former secretary of state Colin Powell on Tuesday said that he would instead vote for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
With this Ms Clinton has earned the rare endorsement of a top Republican leader.
Mr Powell had served in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and was secretary of state in George W. Bush’s first term as President.
He had supported President Barack Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
Mr Powell’s announcement that he would vote for Ms Clinton and not Mr Trump came during a Long Island group luncheon. The move was welcomed by Ms Clinton. “Proud to have the endorsement of General Powell, a decorated soldier and distinguished statesman,” Ms Clinton tweeted.
Mr Powell had been highly critical of Mr Trump’s policies and rhetoric.