The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

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After a couple of pages, this book began to excite me: what a narrative voice! In fact, there are several voices, telling the story of a family from the Dominican Republic, a former Spanish colony in the Caribbean, who move to New Jersey. The main guy is Oscar, a tragic fat kid who can't get a girlfriend, and we hear his story from different points of view, including his own. He is suicidal, but his friend Yunior gives him some advice: "No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times 10." Diaz also takes us back to the Dominican Republic, decades earlier, when Oscar's grandparents and mother lived under the regime of Rafael Trujillo — lived, that is, under the constant threat of rapes, beatings and disappearances. A swirling, brilliant book.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

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 curse that has haunted his family for generations. 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" is a literary triumph, that confirms Junot Diaz as one of the most exciting writers of our time.