Paul Beatty's Booker Prize Winning Novel "The Sellout"-Beatty is the Baldwin of the 21st C

Paul Beatty's (b Amer 1962) Booker Prize winning novel "The Sellout" (2016) is a socially, comedic commentary awash in controversy.  Awarding the Booker Prize to an American writer for the 1st time is in itself contentious.  The Booker prize has been awarded to authors of the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth nations.  Literary feathers have been ruffled by the broadening scope of candidates eligible.  Some maintain this dilutes the distinctive British sensibilities of its heritage & others argue the awarding of this prestigious award may diminish notice of merging writers in lieu of literary heavy- weights.  "The Sellout" is a masterpiece. It's sharp, brilliant, courageous & comedic.  Beatty's writing is comparable in style & intent to James Baldwin & Ralph Ellison.   Ironically, a brouhaha is stirred by Beatty, the 1st American to be bestowed the Booker is notorious for the fact that he is American and not that he is the 1st African-American to receive the honor.  Marlon James (b Jamaica 1970) received the Booker Prize in 2015 for his brilliant novel "A Brief History of 7 Killings," about Bob Marley.  Noted: James' race is black; i.e. Beatty is not the 1st black person to win the Booker.  "The Sellout" is essentially a provocative & perverse look at race in America today with its pervasive issues of racial stereotypes & limitations still lingering in American culture. "Here race is still all-consuming…"   Beatty makes the point "…in this {American} culture 'race' is especially hard to talk about…"  The novel's narrator is a black farmer in an agrarian  Los Angeles ghetto previously known as Dickens that he's dedicated to re-establishing & re-invigorating.  Our hero is called by labels given him;  Master and Sellout.  Sellout is an ingenious farmer & mastermind who devises a plan to restore his community through segregation.  The segregated school in his district for "colored only" is challenged & taken all the way to the Supreme Court; satirizing the efficacy of white supremacy in an  outlandish, irreverent  means that is inventive and irrefutably "a slap in the face of anyone who's ever stood for equality and justice.  It's a racist joke…" To describe "The Sellout" as a hilarious parody is a gross injustice.  The irony brandishes pain & shame at social injustice.  To call Beatty's work anything less than exceptional, insightful and a work of a genius would fall far short.  NYC is voting on 1 of 5 novels to read citywide.  My vote unequivocally goes to "The Sellout" which everyone should be reading & discussing.