The White Boy Shuffle is Paul Beatty's electrifying debut novel about Gunnar Kaufman, a teenage surf-bum who is forced to wise up when his mother moves from suburban Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles.

There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to the reluctant messiah of a "divided, downtrodden people."

This bombastic coming-of-age novel has the uncanny ability to make readers want to laugh and cry at the same time. Beatty mingles horrific reality with wild fancy in this outlandish, laugh-out-loud funny, and poignant vision of contemporary America.