US author Paul Beatty bags Man Booker Prize!Top Stories

October 26, 2016 05:34
US author Paul Beatty bags Man Booker Prize!

Novelist Paul Beatty earned the Man Booker Prize for his novel "The Sellout". He has became the first US author to win the prize.

The jury behind the world's most prestigious English-language literary award said the novel was a "shocking and unexpectedly funny" portrayal of Beatty's native Los Angeles, using satire to explore racial equality in a fictional neighborhood.

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 said.

"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.  "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".

Jury chair Amanda Foreman said, "It did not weigh on the jury that Paul was American." "It shows that there is a global reach to this prize."

The judges said that "the framework of institutional racism and the unjust shooting of Bonbon's father at the hands of police are particularly topical".

Foreman said that, the judges were "excited by the willingness of so many authors to take risks with language and form". "The final six reflect the centrality of the novel in modern culture in its ability to champion the unconventional, to explore the unfamiliar, and to tackle difficult subjects."

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Nandini

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Paul Beatty  Man Booker Prize  The Sellout