Paris Trout is a 1988 American novel written by Pete Dexter. It was the winner of the National Book Award for Fiction."National Book Awards – 1988". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
The novel was adapted into a TV film of the same name.
Plot In a small Georgia town in the 1950s, a bigoted store owner named Paris Trout kills a black man's younger sister and wounds his mother when a car deal between them goes wrong.
Critical reception The Los Angeles Times called the novel "a masterpiece, complex and breath-taking."
When the novel was published, humorist and author Roy Blount Jr. provided a blurb for its promotion, writing, "I put it down once to wipe off the sweat,” a remark that has since been cited by other writers as a notably memorable piece of praise including in 2007 when a New York Times writer asked, “Do they give awards for this kind of thing?”
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