Paul Beatty has become the first US author to win the Man Booker Prize with his racial satire The Sellout, a laugh-out-loud novel whose main character wants to assert his African American identity by, outrageously and transgressively, bringing back slavery and segregation.
Amanda Foreman, chair of the judges, said the book managed "to eviscerate every social taboo". She said The Sellout was "a novel for our times" that contained "an absolutely savage wit" reminiscent of Jonathan Swift or Mark Twain.