The Sellout

I don't read a lot of American novels. This is not a genuine hardline decision or anything, it just happens to be that almost all of my favourite authors are British writers. This is probably a style thing, or maybe a culture thing. When I took American literature classes in  university, I was told the early American writers tried to radically break away from the British style of writing to create their own cultural legacy (same is true for theatre, painting, music, etc). And while reading something, I usually have a pretty good idea whether the author is a Brit or an American (in my opinion: too much show, not enough tell). And 'American' doesn't mean I'll automatically dislike it; I have read some American classics that I liked, and Richard Yates is one of my favourite authors. But to be honest, I never would have read The Sellout if it wouldn't have been the first American novel to win the Man Booker Prize. I always read the Man Booker Prize winner, so I simply had to read this novel too.
The Sellout was written by Paul Beatty, as he said in interviews, because "he was broke". This is probably meant satirically, as every scrap of text I've ever read about The Sellout mentioned the word 'satire' in one of the first three lines. However, I didn't really get all of the satire. Or in other words; I found this book to be more dark and sad than satirical, probably because I don't live in the US and missed a lot of the cultural references. But to me, it felt like a seriously dark novel, with a dark message.
So what is it about? In the prologue we meet the protagonist, who faces trial in the Supreme Court because he has been keeping a black man as a slave. The 'satirical' part of this is that the protagonist himself is also a black man. And that his father has been indoctrinating him on black history and black rights all his life, and that he has been 'resegragating' his hometown of Dickens (and keeping the slave) to enforce black rights. This is basically what the novel deals with; a black man, living on a farm in the middle of a city, resegragating busses and schools and painting a white line around where his hometown used to be to make everything better for everyone. Sounds like a tragic hero to me, but apparently, it was all meant to be satirical. I don't think I had one proper laugh while reading this novel, I just felt sorry for almost every single character in it, but most of all for the protagonist.
Some reviewers have compared Beatty to Mark Twain, but that must just be because of the racial thing, because Mark Twain's writing had a sharpness and a wit to it that I failed to see in The Sellout. But again; maybe I'm just missing a lot of cultural references and subtext an American reader would get.
It's funny, I've visited the US twice now, and the thing that struck me most both times is how different it is from Europe. When I visited China or Jordan or Mozambique, I noticed the similarities, the things that connect us, even though our cultures are so very different. In the US, where you somehow expect things to be very similar, it's the differences that stand out. I think I can group The Sellout with those differences; this is a novel I as a European don't understand in the way an American would. And that is probably why I didn't like it very much. This was only the second novel I've read this year, and it took me a really long time to get through. Not because the reading was hard or because the subject matter was so heavy, but because it didn't grip me. I couldn't really be bothered to find out what would happen next. And that must be a death sentence to any good story.
 For the first American novel to win the Man Booker it is an apt choice, because this is by far the most 'American' American novel I've read in a long time. But in a way, that made it less like a Man Booker winner to me.