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The Sellout

Book Review Paul Beatty’s Booker-winning (2016) novel, The Sellout , is hilarious satire that makes fun of many things that America holds sacred.  But the satire and its fun are so much American that many Indian readers may find it hard to comprehend.  Frankly, I had to refer to the internet scores of times in order to understand the allusions that the novel carries on almost every page. The book and the author The narrator of the novel referred to by only his surname, Me, is facing a trial in the Supreme Court for keeping a black slave.  Me is black himself. The slave he keeps is Homini, the last of the Little Rascals actors still alive.  Homini wanted to be a slave.  It helps him retain his African-American identity.  The whiplash on his back makes his back feel good though his heart feels good while living in a Black-only area.  The narrator also has a strong though complex affiliation with Dickens, a Black-only ghetto.  Me’s father was a sociologist who used th