The Sellout
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Prentice Onayemi
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By:
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Paul Beatty
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.
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Critic reviews
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Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
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The Death of Cool
- From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthood
- By: Gavin McInnes
- Narrated by: Gavin McInnes
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
This is his story, or, rather, stories - lots of them, and all gut-punchingly hilarious, from that first far reach into a girl's tight jeans to turning forty with a cataclysmic party. In between you’ll hear about acid trips, threesomes, Nazi skinheads, his band Anal Chinook (Inuit for “warm wind”), Martians in northern Canada, throwing pedophiles in jail, dinner with the Clash, what happens when you crash Bill Maher's show wasted, and the true story of Vice magazine.
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if you don't buy this book, the terrorists win
- By Kelsey Gholi on 04-03-17
By: Gavin McInnes
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The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
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Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
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Double Feature
- A Novel
- By: Owen King
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Unraveling the tumultuous, decades-spanning story of the Dolan family’s friends, lovers, and adversaries, Double Feature is about letting go of everything - regret, resentment, ambition, dignity, moving pictures, the dead - and taking it again from the top. Combining propulsive storytelling and mordant wit against the backdrop of indie filmmaking, Double Feature brims with a deep understanding of the trials of ambition and art, of relationships and life, and of our attempts to survive it all.
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Worst book ever! Well maybe.
- By Randall on 08-11-17
By: Owen King
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A Good Country
- A Novel
- By: Laleh Khadivi
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A timely novel about the radicalization of a Muslim teen in California - about where identity truly lies, and how we find it. Laguna Beach, California, 2010. Reza Courdee, a 14-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner.
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A very important contribution
- By Mia on 05-29-17
By: Laleh Khadivi
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Illegal
- A Novel
- By: Paul Levine
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Trial lawyer Jimmy “Royal” Payne was his own worst enemy - until now. Haunted by personal tragedy and wanted by the cops, Payne needs to skip town. What he doesn’t need is Tino Perez, a gutsy twelve-year-old Mexican boy in search of his missing - and undocumented - mother. But Payne’s ex-wife, an L.A.P.D. detective he still loves, makes him a deal: help the boy or go to jail. Soon Payne is following Tino into the darker side of the American dream.
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Great opening chapters; very vivid characters!
- By Wayne on 01-31-16
By: Paul Levine
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The Taqwacores
- By: Michael Muhammad Knight
- Narrated by: Shahjehan Khan
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
A Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York, inhabited by burqa-wearing riot girls, mohawked Sufis, straight-edge Sunnis, Shi'a skinheads, Indonesian skaters, Sudanese rude boys, gay Muslims, drunk Muslims, and feminists. Their living room hosts parties and prayers, with a hole smashed in the wall to indicate the direction of Mecca. Their life together mixes sex, dope, and religion in roughly equal amounts, expressed in devotion to an Islamo-punk subculture, "taqwacore".
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Quick, fun, interesting listen
- By Mark on 05-03-11
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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Tuff
- A Novel
- By: Paul Beatty
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Weighing in at 320 pounds, Winston "Tuffy" Foshay, is an East Harlem denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs and dreams of millions from his idea, 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 his wife, Yolanda, he married from jail over the phone. Shrewdly comical as this dazzling novel is, it turns acerbically sublime when the frustrated Tuffy agrees to run for City Council.
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High Larry Us!
- By Amazon Customer on 07-24-23
By: Paul Beatty
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Coyote Blue
- By: Christopher Moore
- Narrated by: James Jenner
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With New York Times best-sellers like Bloodsucking Fiends to his credit, Christopher Moore has developed a devoted cult following. Coyote Blue introduces Samuel Hunter, a young man who's running from his past while being tormented by an ancient Crow God with a talent for mischief.
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ehhhh...
- By Michelle on 08-17-09
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The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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The Neon Rain
- A Dave Robicheaux Novel
- By: James Lee Burke
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
New York Times best-selling author James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels began with this first hard-hitting entry in the series. In The Neon Rain, Detective Robicheaux fishes a prostitute's corpse from a New Orleans bayou and finds that no one, not even the law, cares about a dead hooker.
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Where it all began.
- By 9S on 12-06-09
By: James Lee Burke
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Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor, William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation, as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow Caldonia succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart.
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A meandering audiobook...
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The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño has been called the García Marquez of his generation. The Savage Detectives is a hilarious and sexy, meandering and melancholy, companionable and complicated road trip through Mexico City, Barcelona, Israel, Liberia, and finally the desert of northern Mexico. It is the first of Bolaño's two giant works, with 2666, to be translated into English and is already being hailed as a masterpiece.
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When they met at an airport, it was love at first sight. But in time, everything collapsed. As an unnamed but unforgettable woman muses on her life—from meet cute to marriage and parenthood—her recollections inexorably build to a devastating truth. In this shattering performance, Carey Mulligan, star of the critically lauded drama An Education, captivates audiences with playwright Dennis Kelly’s harrowing ruminations on family, ambition, gender, and violence.
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Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.
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Wondrous Book!!!
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In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away.
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Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
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What listeners say about The Sellout
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Hinzega
- 04-02-16
Funny Book
With the nature of race relations in the world today, it's refreshing to listen to something that brings out the humor in the ridiculousness.
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- Leonard A
- 05-25-16
One of the Best Books I've Read in a Long Time
Who was your favorite character and why?
Hominy: A fictional "last surviving Little Rascal" whose considers himself a slave while not really being very subservient to his "owner." The character manages to bring a good bit of nostalgia into the novel via his reminiscing on his days with The Little Rascals.
Any additional comments?
This is, without a doubt, one of the best books I've read (listened to) in a long time. A biting satire about race and race relations that is intelligent, funny and thought provoking. A rare book that doesn't take itself too seriously while tackling very serious issues. And the case of characters is phenomenal. (How can you not like a fictional former "Little Rascal" as a primary character?)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
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- Doug - Audible
- 07-05-17
A Feat of Satiric Endurance
I'm kicking myself for waiting as long as I did before listening to this one. Beatty's novel earned him the distinction of being the first US writer to win the Man Booker Prize, drew as many comparisons to Pryor and Chappelle as Vonnegut and Twain in its brazen honesty and laugh-out-loud dissection of contemporary American society, and made plenty "Best of" lists last year. But it was hearing narrator Prentice Onayemi that finally convinced me to start Beatty's comic send-up of race and identity in America. Onayemi captures the manic, unceasing energy of Beatty's writing and performs a feat of satiric endurance, moving between characters with the vocal dexterity of a comedian and impressionist rolled in to one. And just as Beatty plays with social taboos and preconceived notions, you can hear Onayemi playing around similarly with his characterizations and, in turn, playing with the listener's expectations.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Brazos
- 06-12-17
A Critical and Comic Masterpiece
I say "critical" because this book offers a brilliantly unique take on "post-racial" America. I can't think of a single kind of person who wouldn't find something to love about this book—except for maybe an exceptionally prude SJW with no imagination. The book makes a joke out of every political message you've ever heard about race in America and leaves you wanting to help pave the way to a more understanding society, but realizing just how tough that's liable to be, given the sheer idiocy at work behind every institution.
This book does what only the best comedy—think Dave Chappelle, Aziz Ansari, Louis C.K.—can do: push your buttons and make you question your worldview and what's going on in the world around you. And at times, the team of Beatty and Onayemi are on par with those greats, with rich, unique characters and situations that read like you're watching Chappelle's Show sketches with commentary from a sociology professor.
I listened to this entire book in one sitting. It's that good. My one complaint is the lull near the middle of the book. The action slows, the jokes dry up, and we spend a lot of time listening to recounted personal histories and anecdotes that lack some of the punch of the early pages. Don't let that keep you from reading this book, though. Where others would preach their message about how we all need to get along, Beatty grabs you by the shoulder and laughs with you, recognizing that we're all a bit too human for that.
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- D. Newell
- 04-18-16
Excellent story telling!
This novel is great, but what really catapults it is the narration. I'm still looking for another audio book as enjoyable as this one!
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- Annie
- 04-22-16
Unbelievably Good.
Excellent performance of a funny, shocking, brilliantly written book. Don't hesitate to add this to your collection!
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- Eva Louise Gilliam
- 04-17-16
Brilliantly written and brilliant read
I loved this book. It was humorous and thought provoking, and I highly recommend it!
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- Nancy A Achstatter
- 05-29-18
Absolutely love this book
This book is relatable and very funny. The narrator does a great job as well.
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- Doug Beckwith
- 11-03-16
Fascinating Satire
This was a fascinating social satire. Well worth a read or listen. However,
as much as I love listening to books, this one might be better read because of the density of the right-on satirical verbiage. It went by pretty fast in the audiobook.
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- Earl Robinson
- 02-05-21
Beautiful
Brilliantly and cleverly written. The characters were rich, diverse, and full of personality. I really enjoyed listening to this.
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