The 2010s were a hugely significant decade for the Booker, largely due to the shift in rules which came into place in 2014. From that year onwards, the Prize was open to all novels published in the English language, replacing the long-held (and many might say, dated) criteria that focused on authors of British, Irish and Commonwealth heritage. This shift led to a lot of hand-wringing and fretting about the potential “domination” of the Prize by US authors, and a dilution of what the Prize stood for.

The Sellout takes place in the fictional town of Dickens, California, an agrarian town around LA. It begins with its narrator, an African-American farmer whose father has recently been unjustly killed by police, known only as "Me", or "Bonbon" - a nickname, standing trial before the Supreme Court for crimes related to his attempt to restore slavery and segregation in Dickens. What follows is an examination of the alternately painfully real and highly surreal events that led to this seemingly absurd scenario.