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Junot Díaz

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Paperback – 2 March 2009

by Junot Diaz (Author)

2,375 ratings

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A literary triumph - winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the ancient curse that has haunted his family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, violent accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love.

With dazzling energy and insight Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous lives of Oscar, his runaway sister Lola, their beautiful mother Belicia, and in the family's uproarious journey from the Dominican Republic to the US and back.

Rendered with uncommon warmth and humour, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao presents an astonishing vision of the endless human capacity to persevere - and to risk it all - in the name of love. A literary triumph, this novel confirms Junot Diaz as one of the funniest, warmest and most exciting writers of our time.

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Product details

Publisher : Faber Paperback; Main edition (2 March 2009)
Language : English
Paperback : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 0571239730
ISBN-13 : 978-0571239733
Dimensions : 12.6 x 2.1 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 87,504 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 11,618 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 37,323 in Religion & Spirituality (Books)

Customer Reviews:
2,375 ratings

Product description

About the Author

Junot Diaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He is a graduate of Rutgers University and received his Master of Fine Arts Degree from Cornell University. His collection of short stories, Drown, was described as 'a dazzlingly talented first book' by Independent on Sunday. He teaches creative writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		17%
3 star		9%
2 star		5%
1 star		5%

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Top reviews from Australia

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Anne Connolly

A brilliant book, beautiful writing; raises the bar for literature.

Reviewed in Australia on 11 November 2015

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This writer has given us a gift. Diaz transcends culture beautifully but does not take short cuts. His story is told from the experience of someone from the Dominican Republic living in the USA but everyone can feel what the characters feel. His sporadic insertions of Spanglish are insightful and well placed. He pushes us to explore the culture with Spanish inserts. It is through the extra work that we have to do as readers that immerses us in this world and we want more. Poor Oscar - there is some of him in all of us. This is sad, hilarious and so full of life.
This book is truly brilliant.

Helpful

Sydney1981

Average...

Reviewed in Australia on 10 August 2015

Verified Purchase

I liked this book...but I also didn't. I found the author's use of Spanish to be excessive (for an English translation), and interrupted the flow of the story. Many a time I had to reach for google translate to try and work out what was being said (there was often little context to even attempt to work it out).
The story itself is good - took me until page 67 to really get into the story - after that it was a page turner. Not really sure how it came to win the Pulitzer to be honest.

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ron thomas

Very macho and highly stereotyped characters

Reviewed in Australia on 2 September 2020

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Over the top characters and plot, good insight into Dominican Republic. Paper thin characterization. Too much Spanish inserted.

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Jo Vraca

So beautiful

Reviewed in Australia on 25 February 2017

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I didn't know what to expect but I got everything I could have hoped for. What a terrifically beautiful book!

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Elizabeth Short

Challenging .

Reviewed in Australia on 13 April 2014

Verified Purchase

So many characters , so many places , made me concentrate rather than just be entertained . My first meeting with Junot Diaz , I wonder if there is time remaining in my life to meet him again .

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

J. Smith

Poorly written female characters

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 October 2019

Verified Purchase

What a disappointment after all the great reviews. Really found the way young girls are described so sexually hard to stomach. Page after page of descriptions of young teens with perfect arses and plump boobs. And even Oscar’s main motivation is trying to bed girls.

I’m no prude and love boobs as much as the next reader, but the book falls into the classic trope of male writers who can’t write women without describing how they look naked. Even when describing female children. Try and describe any of the characters without mentioning sex or how they look, and you’ll struggle to write a paragraph. They’re all quite one dimensional.

I also find books that lapse into another language faux intellectual - it doesn’t really add to the narrative but does exclude anyone without a pretty decent grasp of Spanish.

20 people found this helpful

C B

Not my thing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 December 2018

Verified Purchase

Ugh! I couldn’t get past how women were talked about. I know it is supposed to be authentic but I just didn’t want to read any more.

16 people found this helpful

Paul

Tremendous

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 November 2018

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An absolutely tremendous book which follows the lives of three generations of an immigrant family, pre- and post-emigration. It is obvious Diaz is writing about something he knows, something he has lived himself, even down to the geeky references to sci-fi and 80s boardgames. Unusual in structure with its multiple narrators and time lines, but it is not difficult to read. The footnote sections, which add real history to the imaginary story, are a great addition. This book led me to Diaz's short story collections, This Is How You Lose Her and Drown, both of which are excellent too. Shame about the 'me too' stuff in the media though.

4 people found this helpful

Huck PortlyFellow

Horribly sweary ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 February 2020

Verified Purchase

... ewww. Very difficult to like - despite the reviews. I stopped reading!

2 people found this helpful

Zoe Brooks

Worth working at

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 May 2013

Verified Purchase

When I read the trials and tribulations of Oscar, the over-weight fantasy geek who desperately wants a relationship with a woman, I wondered how the author was going to sustain Oscar's story for a whole book. I needn't have worried: the book rapidly expands beyond Oscar's limited life to become a story of three generations of his family set against the terrible history the Dominican Republic.

This is not an easy book to read: the book's structure is complex, switching narrators, moving in and out of history. In addition there is the regular use of Spanish slang, of swear words and of geeky references to Sci Fi, fantasy and Japanese anime. For this British reader I could have done with a lexicon.

Nevertheless I found the effort of reading this book all worthwhile. It was fascinating to explore a history which I knew nothing about and to watch as the lives of Oscar and his other family members unfolded.

4 people found this helpful

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