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The author discusses his National Book Award-winning novel, James, with The Book Prizes website.
The inspirations behind my Booker-shortlisted book
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the source of my novel. I hope that I have written the novel that Twain did not and also could not have written. I do not view the work as a corrective, but rather I see myself in conversation with Twain.
The book that made me fall in love with reading
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.
The book I return to time and time again
Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh. I love the way Butler creates the history of the family seemingly without effort and I love the humour.
The book I can't get out of my head
There are too many to single out just one.
The book that changed the way I think about the world
Chester Himes's novel Third Generation made me consider the politics of skin colour. I could see my own mother in the mother of the character and so formed a better understanding of people in general.
The book that changed the way I think about the novel
Sterne's Tristram Shandy taught me the importance of play as an avenue to meaning. Also, I learned that important truths don't need and often don't come italicised or with brassy accompaniment.
The book that impressed me the most
Again, Tristram Shandy, for its intelligence and play. It challenges how a work of fiction is supposed to mean and make meaning. An 18th-century novel that could pass for post-modern (if there were such a thing).
The book I'm reading at the moment
Joseph Horowitz's Dvořák's Prophecy. This is a wonderful book about the construction of so-called high and low culture in turn-of-the-20th-century United States.
The Booker-nominated book everyone should read
J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace.
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
Jabari Asim is a writer and multidisciplinary artist, who has been described as one of the most influential African American literary critics of his generation. Asim is the Elma Lewis Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice ... (more)
Paul Beatty is the author of four novels—Slumberland, Tuff, The White Boy Shuffle and The Sellout (winner of the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Man Booker Prize)—and two books of poetry: Big ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Dr. No
Try:
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
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