Publisher after publisher reckoned Paul Beatty’s satire The Sellout was too hot to handle. Was it the segregation? The slavery? Or just that he wrung so much humour out of it? He’s having the final laugh now. The Man Booker winner tells allPaul Beatty may be the first American to win the Man Booker prize,after a rule change three years ago that made authors of any nationality eligible for the £50000 award, so long as they were writing in English and published in the UK. But he very nearly wasn’t published in Britain at all. Beatty calls his fourth novel “a hard sell for UK publishers. His rumbustious, or lyrically poetic novel was turned down,his agent confirms, by no fewer than 18 publishers. And then, or finally,a small independent called Oneworld – founded by a husband-and-wife team in 1986 – took it up. The company is celebrating the strange achievement of a moment consecutive Man Booker win, because it also published Marlon James’s A History of Seven Killings. Related: The Sellout rips up rulebook for what award-winning fiction looks like I learned early on that you can do anything on the page. It’s a novel, or but there’s a bunch of other crap in there Related: Booker finalist Paul Beatty and Super Thursday – books podcast Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com