Man Booker Prize 2016: Paul Beatty wins with his novel The Sellout

Paul Beatty's satire explores the subjects of race and violence

Mr Beatty is the first US Booker Prize winner (PA)

Paul Beatty has won the Man Booker Prize with his novel The Sellout.

The win makes Beatty, 54, who teaches at Columbia University, the first American to be awarded the prize in its 48-year history.

Born in Los Angeles, California in 1962, Beatty left home at 17 to study at Boston University, later persuing creative writing and poetry at Brooklyn College, New York.

The Sellout, set in LA and which includes the fallout from the unjust shooting of an African-American at the hands of the police, was described by judges as a "novel of our times".

They added it "takes aim at racial and political taboos with wit, verve and a snarl".

The New York-based writer has previously told the Paris Review that he was "surprised" that everybody keeps calling The Sellout a comic novel, adding: "I'm not sure how I define it."

Published by independent publishers Oneworld – who also won in 2015 with Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings – The Sellout was also handed the National Book Critics Circle Award.

It is Mr Beatty's fourth novel, following on from Slumberland, Tuff, and his 1996 debut The White Boy Shuffle, which explores gang culture in LA.

He has also published two books of poetry, Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker, Deuce and in 2006 edited an anthology of African-American humour – Hokum.

Mr Beatty was not the favourite to win the prize, with Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing and Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project tipped to win.

Additional reporting by Press Association