Paul Beatty on Tuesday became the first U.S. author to win the Man Booker Prize — the most prestigious English-language literary award — for his novel The Sellout.
The jury said the novel was a "shocking and unexpectedly funny" portrayal of his native Los Angeles, which employs satire to explore racial equality in a fictional neighbourhood.
"I can't tell you guys how long a journey this has been for me," the writer, overwhelmed with emotion, said as he received the award from Prince Charles's wife, Camilla.
"In his equally affectionate and bitterly ironic portrait of the city and its inhabitants, Paul Beatty dodges inherited views of race relations, solutions or assumptions," the jury said.
The author "presents through his beguilingly honest and well-intentioned hero an innocent's view of his corrupt world.”
The Sellout is Beatty's fourth novel and earlier this year it won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States.
