The Sellout Audiobook By Paul Beatty cover art

The Sellout

A Novel

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The Sellout

By: Paul Beatty
Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
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About this listen

Audie Award Finalist, Fiction, 2016

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.

Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens - on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles - the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since the '68 quake."

Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fuelled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident - the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins - he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

©2015 Paul Beatty (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
African American Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Satire Top 100 Essentials Comedy Witty Funny Thought-Provoking Inspiring African American Humor

Critic reviews

  • Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2016

  • 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Fiction
"Narrator Prentice Onayemi embodies Bonbon, along with the novel's many unique characters: a former 'Our Gang' understudy, a former girlfriend who is now a city bus driver, the denizens of the neighborhood, and the white surfer dudes whom Bonbon regularly confuses at the beach. There's even a small part for Justice Clarence Thomas, which Onayemi does in style, and street Spanish, which, when required, flows perfectly." ( AudioFile magazine)

Featured Article: The Audible Essentials Top 100


The spirited (but friendly) debate over these titles could have gone on indefinitely. With years of listening, countless customer reviews, and a catalog of seemingly infinite great listens, 100 suddenly felt like a very small number. What we know for sure—each title that made it to this collection is elevated and made special in some way by audio, whether by a layered performance from a single narrator, a brilliantly cohesive full cast, original music, or immersive sound effects. Discover an audio experience for the ages.

Editor's Pick: Best of the Decade

The new Great American Novel
''I can't think of another novel from this decade that affected me as much as The Sellout did. For me, the The Sellout revolutionized what the contemporary American novel could be—satirical, lyrical, truly laugh-out-loud funny—all while attacking the ugliness that lives within our world without ever flinching. The unrelenting rhythm of Beatty's writing, which is brought to life by Prentice Onayemi's narration, will have you hooked within minutes of the prologue. If there's one novel of this decade that you should not sleep on, this is it.''—Aaron S., Audible Editor