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Born in the ´agrarian ghetto´ of Dickens - on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles - the narrator of The Sellout is raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, and spends his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. Led to believe his father´s pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family´s financial woes, he is shocked to discover, when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, that there never was a memoir. All that´s left is a bill for a drive-through funeral.Fuelled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from embarrassment.
Enlisting the help of Dickens´ most famous resident - Hominy Jenkins - he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school. What follows is a remarkable journey that challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement and the holy grail of racial equality - the black Chinese restaurant.

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Paul Beatty, geboren 1962 in Los Angeles, lebt in New York City. Er war der erste Preisträger des Grand Poetry Slam des Nuyorican Poets Café.

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