Paul Beatty, (think Dave Chappelle with an MFA) communicates the urgent ugliness of race relations, income disparity, and cultural conflict by presenting it alongside nonsensical plot elements that are only slightly more absurd than reality. Half cultural expose and half satiric fantasy, The Sellout presents life in poor America like a bad drug trip relentlessly hopeless and hilariously unlikely. The Sellout is a gut-punching, funny, cynical, eye-opening tall tale about an urban farmer who tries to re-segregate his city and winds up smoking pot with a bailiff while his case is heard by the U.S. This year, I chose Paul Beatty’s The Sellout because it won the Man Booker Prize and its topic – race and poverty from the viewpoint of a fictional character in South Central Los Angeles – seemed particularly timely. And in 2013, it was Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, which won the National Book Award and convinced Ang Lee it was worth making a movie. In 2014, I chased Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch across the globe after it won a Pulitzer.

In 2015, it was the Parisian, perplexing, and Nobel Prize-winning Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano.

It tells the truth without the facts.įor the past few years, I have made a habit of reading one of the year’s best novels. It connects to something deeper than philosophy and dictum. Fiction - good fiction - does more than entertain, in my opinion. But I have a confession: If I only read pastor books, I think I would go crazy. As a pastor, I read a lot about theology and church leadership.

The sellout book