The Sellout (Paul Beatty); Picador, 2016

A biting satire about a young mans isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beattys The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.

Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens - on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles - the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "Id die in the same bedroom Id grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling thatve been there since the 68 quake."

Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his fathers pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his familys financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All thats left is the bill for a drive-thru 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 further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the towns most famous resident - the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins - he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

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