Paul Beatty

"A bombastic coming-of-age novel.... The White Boy Shuffle has the uncanny ability to make readers want to laugh and cry at the same time."--Los Angeles Times The first novel from National Book Critics Circle Award and Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout Paul Beatty's hilarious and scathing debut novel is about Gunnar Kaufman, an awkward, black surfer bum who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a "divided, downtrodden people."

From Paul Beatty, the author of the Man Booker Prize winner The Sellout, comes Tuff, a novel as fast-paced and hard-edged as the Harlem streets it portrays. Age nineteen and weighing in at 320 pounds, Winston "Tuffy" Foshay is an East Harlem denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs and dreams of earning millions from his idea for Cap'n Crunch: The Movie, starring Danny DeVito. His best friend is a disabled Muslim who wants to rob banks, his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X, and he married his wife, Yolanda, over the phone from jail. He's funny and fierce, frustrated and feared. And when Tuff decides to run for City Council, this dazzling novel goes from astoundingly funny to acerbically sublime. By turns profound and irreverent, and populated with a hilarious supporting cast, Paul Beatty's Tuff is satire at its razor-sharp best. "An extravagant, satirical cri de couer... Beatty's blunt, impious, streetwise eloquence has a kind of transfixing power." --The New York Times Book Review "Masterfully conceived and highly entertaining... Richly textured and unforgettable."--The Boston Globe

Berättaren i Svikaren står åtalad i USAs högsta domstol. Hans brott? Att i Los Angeles-stadsdelen Dickens försökt återinföra rassegregationen på det lokala gymnasiet och slaveriet på sin lilla odling av vattenmeloner och marijuana. Detta för att återuppbygga en stad som raserats av knarkhandel, föroreningar och våld så till den grad att inte ens Tjernobyl eller Kinshasa vill bli Dickens vänort. När han räddar livet på stadens enda celebritet, den förbisedda 30-talsbarnstjärnan Hominy, och deras relation utvecklas till slav och Massa blomstrar åter Dickens. När Svikaren av Paul Beatty utkom i USA var det en lika chockerande som revolutionerande roman som nådde läsarna och kom att älskas av såväl dem som en enad kritikerkår. Med en oändlig mängd humor och ett pisksnärtande rastlöst språk, som refererar lika ledigt till Kardashians som Martin Luther King och Tennyson, skriver Paul Beatty en ursinnig och vanvettig satir över dagens USA. Som läsare skrattar du högt åt Beattys humor och vändningar, men det är ett skratt som fastnar i halsen. Svikaren är sylvass och obehaglig när Beatty blottlägger den amerikanska rasismens historia och hur den helt och fullt även idag genomsyrar det amerikanska samhällsbygget. Sällan har någon med sådan skärpa skärskådat det samtida USA och skrivit en samhällsskildring med sådan humor och obehag.

Gunnar Kaufman bor sammen med mor og søstre i multikulturelle og politisk korrekte Santa Monica, helt til mor finner ut at ungdommene mister sin kulturelle og etniske sjel hvis de ikke kommer under en mer enhetlig innflytelse. Dermed ender de i Hillside, selve urbildet på den svarte ghettoen, og frontkolliderer med seriemorderen Psycho Loco og Betty og Veronica, Hillsides svar på Pippi Langstrømpe og Modesty Blaise. En original og oppfinnsom litterær situasjonskomedie om en uvanlig afroamerikaners søken etter identitet i et glimrende karikert amerikansk kulturelt og etnisk landskap.

A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent) * One of the New York Times' '100 Best Books of the 21st Century' A LAUGH-OUT-LOUD SATIRE ABOUT RACE, CLASS AND INEQUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA, BY A LITERARY GENIUS AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME Winner of the Man Booker Prize, 2016 In his trademark absurdist style, Paul Beatty will make you laugh and cry in this outrageous – and outrageously entertaining – indictment of our time. Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged psychological studies. He is told that this work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, he discovers there never was a memoir. All that’s left is a bill for a drive-thru funeral. What’s more, Dickens has literally been wiped off the map to save California from further embarrassment. Fuelled by despair, the narrator sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school. The results will take him from Dickens to the Supreme Court, in the trial of the century. ‘Outrageous, hilarious and profound.’ Simon Schama, Financial Times ‘The longer you stare at Beatty’s pages, the smarter you’ll get.’ Guardian ‘The most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I’ve read.’ New York Times

‘A thousand-miles-an-hour hoot.’ Esquire ‘Hilarious…and immensely moving.’ The New Yorker ‘A blast of satirical heat from the talented heart of black American life.’ New York Times White Boy Shuffle is Man Booker-winner Paul Beatty’s electrifying debut novel about teenage-surf-bum Gunnar Kaufman who is forced to wise up when his mother moves from suburban Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighbourhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a ‘divided, downtrodden people’. A bombastic coming-of-age novel that has the uncanny ability to make readers want to laugh and cry at the same time,Beatty mingles horrific reality with wild fancy in this outlandish, laugh-out-loud funny and poignant vision of contemporary America.

‘Beatty insistently finds poetry in the projects, dignity on the street.’ Guardian ‘Beatty’s blunt, impious, streetwise eloquence [is] transfixing’ New York Times ‘The writing here is seamless and teeming with momentum’ New York Times Book Review Winston ‘Tuffy’ Foshay is a 19-year-old, 24-stone ‘player-king’ to a hapless gang in Spanish Harlem, a denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs. His best friend is a disabled Muslim man who wants to rob banks, his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X, and his wife he married over the phone whilst in jail. When the frustrated Tuffy agrees to run for City Council, so begins a zany, riotous concoction of nonstop hip-hop chatter and brilliant mainstream social satire, as the indomitable Beatty again demonstrates why he is hailed as one of the shrewdest cultural commentators and hilarious cutups of his generation.

‘Shockingly original’ The Times ‘A literary freestyler with brio to burn…scabrous and very funny’ Guardian ‘A no-holds-barred comedic romp’ Junot Diaz After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, aka the Schwa, a little known avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city's dreamy streets ruminating about race, sex, love, Teutonic gods and the Berlin Wall in search of his artistic – and spiritual – other. Ferocious, bombastic and laugh-out-loud funny, Slumberland is the second novel from Man Booker-winner Paul Beatty, a comic genius at the top of his game.