Beatty becomes first American winner of Booker prize
LONDON — Paul Beatty has won the Man Booker Prize for fiction for The Sellout, becoming the first American novelist to take the prestigious literary award.
Judges said Beatty’s provocative book, a stinging satire of race and class in the United States, was as timely as the evening news.
Two Canadians had been in the running for the award, which comes with a cash prize of about $80,000.
Vancouver-born, Montrealbased Madeleine Thien was a finalist for her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Earlier Tuesday, she was honoured with the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction.
Montreal-born, Hungarian-based author David Szalay was nominated for All That Man Is.
Historian Amanda Foreman, who chaired the judging panel, said The Sellout “plunges into the heart of contemporary American society, and with absolutely savage wit — the kind I haven’t seen since [Jonathan] Swift or [Mark] Twain.”
The Sellout is set in a rundown Los Angeles suburb called Dickens, where the residents include the last survivor of the Little Rascals and the book’s narrator, Bonbon, a black American on trial at the U.S. Supreme Court for attempting to reinstate slavery and racial segregation.
The book has been likened to the comedy of Richard Pryor and Chris Rock. Beatty, 54, goes where many authors fear to tread — racial stereotypes, offensive speech and police violence are all subject to his scathing eye.
Foreman said The Sellout, which mixes pop culture, philosophy and politics with humour and anger, sets out to “eviscerate every social taboo.”
“This is a book that nails the reader to the cross with cheerful abandon,” she said. “That is why the book works — because while you’re being nailed, you’re being tickled.”
The five judges met for four hours Tuesday to choose the winner from among six finalists, whittled down from 155 submissions. Foreman said the decision for Beatty’s work was unanimous.
Founded in 1969, the Man Booker Prize was previously open to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, but was expanded in 2014 to include all English-language authors.
Bookies had considered Beatty a longshot, and picked Thien as the favourite.
Thien’s novel, set in China before, during and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, has rocketed to the top of the bestseller list and emerged among the most acclaimed titles of the season. Do Not Say We Have Nothing has also been shortlisted for the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize being handed out next month.
For the Governor General’s Literary Award, Saskatoon’s Bill Waiser won in the non-fiction category for A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905 (Fifth House Publishers), which explores the early history of Saskatchewan through an aboriginal and environmental lens.
Montreal-based Lazer Lederhendler was honoured in the translation (French to English) category for the Giller-nominated The Party Wall (Biblioasis) written by Catherine Leroux.
Rounding out the list of Governor General’s Award winners are: • Poetry: The Waking Comes Late by Steven Heighton of Kingston, Ont. • Drama: Pig Girl by Colleen Murphy of Toronto • Young people’s literature (text): Calvin by Martine Leavitt of High River, Alta. • Young people’s literature (illustrated books): Tokyo Digs a Garden by Jon-Erik Lappano and Kellen Hatanaka (Guelph, Ont./Stratford, Ont.)
The Governor General’s Literary Awards, launched in 1936, have celebrated more than 700 works by more than 500 authors, poets, playwrights, translators and illustrators.