Erasure by Percival Everett

I bought this in one of Waterstone's "buy this for 99p" offers. The hope, I assume, is that by selecting very good books and selling them ultra cheaply one will read author's that one wouldn't usually, and then be persuaded by the quality of the work to purchase more from that writer's back catalogue.
Worked on me!
This book is fabulous. I am shit at book reviews (and everyone at work always says "But you write fiction, you should be great at doing them." Not true, I am rubbish and repetitive. So apologies.) The story is (roughly) that of a black American author whose works are at the high end of the literary market and thus don't sell. He works as a literary professor and seethes at the Oprah culture that he feels betrays his race by hawking ghetto tales of poor, violent, ignorant black people. When a novel written in ghetto slang becomes a best seller he writes his own parody entitled initially "My pafology" and then simply "Fuck." This is included within the book "Erasure" alongside a story of family and death and the search to belong. It is funny, witty, clear and smart.
You should read it.