Sellout (Beatty) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The first 100 pages of [Paul Beatty's] new novel, The Sellout, are the most caustic and the most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I've read in at least a decade. I gave up underlining the killer bits because my arm began to hurt.... [They] read like the most concussive monologues and interviews of Chris Rock, Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle wrapped in a satirical yet surprisingly delicate literary and historical sensibility.... The jokes come up through your spleen.... The riffs don't stop coming in this landmark and deeply aware comic novel.... [It] puts you down in a place that's miles from where it picked you up.
Dwight Garner - New York Times


Swiftian satire of the highest order.... Giddy, scathing and dazzling.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal


[The Sellout] is among the most important and difficult American novels written in the 21st century.... It is a bruising novel that readers will likely never forget.
Kiese Laymon - Los Angeles Times


The Sellout isn't just one of the most hilarious American novels in years, it also might be the first truly great satirical novel of the century.... [It] is a comic masterpiece, but it's much more than just that-it's one of the smartest and most honest reflections on race and identity in America in a very long time.
Michael Schaub - NPR.org


Beatty’s satirical latest  is a droll, biting look at racism in modern America.... Beatty gleefully...question[s] what exactly constitutes black identity in America. Wildly funny but deadly serious, Beatty’s caper is populated by outrageous caricatures, and its damning social critique carries the day.
Publishers Weekly


Beatty, author of the deservedly highly praised The White Boy Shuffle (1996), here outdoes himself and possibly everybody else in a send-up of race, popular culture, and politics in today's America . . . Beatty hits on all cylinders in a darkly funny, dead-on-target, elegantly written satire . . . [The Sellout] is frequently laugh-out-loud funny and, in the way of the great ones, profoundly thought provoking. A major contribution. —Mark Levin
Library Journal


Beatty has never been afraid to stir the pot when it comes to racial and socioeconomic issues, and his latest is no different. In fact, this novel is his most incendiary, and readers unprepared for streams of racial slurs...in the service of satire should take a pass.... Another daring, razor-sharp novel from a writer with talent to burn.
Kirkus Reviews