An oral history of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, 10 years on

2015 in the United States of America: racial tensions were taking centre stage, among politicians and pundits, from campuses to courtrooms. As Barack Obama’s second term was drawing to a close, the political pendulum was swinging to the right; that summer, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter protests had coalesced into a fully-fledged political movement. It seems, then, that Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, a biting satire about race relations in the US, arrived at the perfect moment. It was as if he had planned it that way – but had he? 

Paul Beatty: ‘I don’t know if people know this, but I finished that book in 2013, although it didn’t get published until two years later in the States. My editor [in the US] had moved publishing houses, and took the book with him. So the book had been done for a long, long time before it came out in the States. I would always say it took me five years to write, but part of that process was that delay.’  

The Sellout was released in the US in March 2015, at a time when race inequality and divisions were reaching their worst levels for a decade. 

Paul Beatty: ‘The atmosphere… I’m definitely not thinking about it when I’m writing. I guess I was nervous about the initial reception [to the book]. And I remember saying something to the publicist, and they just said, “Yeah, don’t worry about it”. And I kind of just stopped worrying about it.’ 

Beatty’s publicist was right; he had little to be anxious about. Reviewing the book in the New Yorker, Hua Hsu called The Sellout ‘superb’, while Dwight Garner in the New York Times said the first 100 pages were ‘the most caustic and the most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I’ve read in at least a decade’. By March 2016, the book had gone on to become the fiction category winner in the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Awards in America. Momentum was building fast. 

Juliet Mabey: ‘The person who was doing the publicity for the event introduced me to Andrew Holgate [then literary editor of the Sunday Times]. In our conversation, he happened to mention, off the cuff, that he couldn’t believe no British publisher had picked up the rights to Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. My ears pricked up. So I immediately went home, ordered a copy and read it, and then got hold of his agent, Sarah Chalfont.

‘It’s not that common for British publishers to buy rights to a book eight months after publication, unless it’s already been a massive original success. At that point, over here, The Sellout hadn’t really made waves. Without Andrew having mentioned it and being so enthusiastic about it, it would’ve passed me by as well. 

‘I really liked the idea of using satire to explore racism. I thought that was clever because you enjoy the novel, you enjoy the story, but at the same time, it’s hard-hitting. I thought it took the reader to places they wouldn’t naturally go. And that to me was exciting. Paul’s writing, which I hadn’t read before, is brilliant; he’s quite astonishing.’ 

Once Oneworld acquired the book in early 2016, it was a quick turnaround to publication. With the US paperback release imminent, Oneworld decided to forgo a hardback and release straight into paperback. The UK edition quickly attracted attention, even before it was officially released. 

Juliet Mabey: ‘Before it was published, it was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Woodhouse Prize for Comic Fiction, which was brilliant because that immediately put it on people’s radar and meant that anybody who hadn’t picked it up to review would hear about it. It’s not the biggest prize out there, but it has its own fans, of course, and any prize is great.’  

Paul Beatty: ‘I think maybe it was when I was shortlisted, the Booker sent out some questionnaire and I was like, “Oh, this is a thing”. It’s an institution. I had never read any Booker-winning book, ever; I had to go do some research. I thought, there’s got to be something that’s been nominated that I’ve read, and there were a couple. But it was the first time I realised how seriously the Booker took itself. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, necessarily. I just really had no clue.’ 

In July 2016, the Booker Prize judging panel announced their longlist, which also featured American writers Ottessa Moshfegh and Elizabeth Strout, as well as David Szalay, J.M. Coetzee and Deborah Levy. 

Amanda Foreman: ‘I’d heard of The Sellout, but I hadn’t read it [before the judging]. So I read it for the first time as a judge, and it immediately stood out as an important book. It was very, very clear that it was totally going to make the second round, at the very least.’ 

When The Sellout was longlisted, Mabey flew out to America to impress upon Beatty the significance of the prize – and, based on her experiences the year before, how important it was for him to participate in events promoting it.  

Juliet Mabey: ‘I think I was hoping it would get on the longlist. I wasn’t necessarily expecting it to get further, though I thought it had a chance. But we had obviously been through this quite recently, so I immediately flew to New York as soon as we’d had the briefing from the Booker team and had dinner with Paul and said: “Look, you need to ring fence that week in October for the shortlist events, just in case.”’ 

Juliet Mabey: ‘I always tell my authors they’re not going to win because I think that’s a much better way to go into the dinner, because it’s terrifying otherwise. Not that it’s part of their [the judges’] rationale, but we thought a small independent was unlikely to win two years in a row. And to be the first American seemed a bit of a hurdle. So we were feeling really relaxed.’ 

Amanda Foreman: ‘There’s a sort of funny alchemy sometimes that goes on in that final deliberation. You know you’ve got a time limit, that you’ve got to come to a decision, and those decisions come out for different reasons. Even on that very day, a book will speak to you for a different reason than it did the day before. I think that one of the reasons why The Sellout resonated and continues to resonate is because its originality has stood the test of time. There were really terrific books that year, but nothing since has come close to the wacky, extraordinary flights of imagination and humour and perception and emotion that The Sellout has.’ 

Paul Beatty: ‘I had no expectations, which was great. I think I had gone to the bathroom [just before the announcement]; I guess people who are involved in the process, they know who’s won. But I remember because I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, and somebody had to come fetch me, and he was just so panicked. But, I mean, I was still completely surprised. I didn’t know people took bets on it, and I think I remember asking somebody my odds once [on the day of the ceremony The Sellout had odds of 5/1]. I think somebody had asked me something and I was like, “I think I’ve written a decent book and I’m pretty satisfied with that.” I was super grateful for winning, absolutely. I’d put a lot of work in and that kind of recognition. I really appreciated it.’