Tuff

By Paul Beatty

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Tuff is Paul Beatty's second novel, a comic portrait of Winston Foshay, a 300-pound former gang member from East Harlem. At nineteen, with a wife, a baby and a record, Tuff decides to run for a seat on the New York City Council, backed by an odd crew that includes a Japanese American radical and a Jewish rabbi. Beatty mixes satire, street talk and verbal invention to look at race, politics and ambition in 1990s New York.

Recommended by 1 person

• John Green: “If you want to belly-laugh and be truly astonished by linguistic acrobatics, I recommend "Tuff" by Paul Beatty. Now Beatty is more famous for his books, "The White Boy Shuffle" and the Booker Award Winning "The Sellout", but I first read this book twenty years ago and I've been thinking about it ever since.”