The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

Winner of:
The Pulitzer Prize
The National Book Critics Circle Award
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize
A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year

One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more...

Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read

Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who--from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister--dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fuk --a curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere--and risk it all--in the name of love.

Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 09/02/2008
Pages: 368
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.01h x 5.20w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781594483295
Age: Young Adult

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.8
Point Value: 16
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 122410 / Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao


Award: International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award - Finalist


Review Citation(s):
Entertainment Weekly 08/12/2008 pg. 144
New York Times Book Review 09/14/2008 pg. 28
People Weekly 09/22/2008 pg. 63
Poder Hispanic 09/01/2008 pg. 52
Commonweal 12/05/2008 pg. 26
Village Voice 12/23/2009 pg. 28
People Weekly 12/24/2012 pg. 49

About the Author
Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist; and a debut picture book, Islandborn. He is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.