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 New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

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 and named one of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

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 fukú--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.

Author: Junot Díaz
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 09/06/2007
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.80w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781594489587
Audience: 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: National Book Critics Circle Award - Winner
Award: L.A. Times Book Prize - Finalist
Award: Pulitzer Prize - Winner
Award: Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award - Winner
Award: Massachusetts Book Award (MassBook) - Winner
Award: Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize - Winner
Award: Dayton Literary Peace Prize - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 05/01/2007 pg. 54
Publishers Weekly 06/18/2007 pg. 31
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2007 pg. 682
Booklist 07/01/2007 pg. 25
Vanity Fair 09/01/2007 pg. 204
Poder Hispanic 09/01/2007 pg. 79
Time 09/03/2007 pg. 62
Newsweek 09/10/2007 pg. 51
New York Times Book Review 09/30/2007 pg. 9
New York Times Book Review 10/07/2007 pg. 38
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/05/2007 pg. 28
People Weekly 09/17/2007 pg. 60
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/02/2007 pg. 12
Time 12/24/2007 pg. 78
Newsweek 12/24/2007 pg. 16
People Weekly 12/31/2007 pg. 59
Multicultural Review 12/01/2007 pg. 53
Entertainment Weekly 12/28/2007 pg. 137
LJ Best Books of Year 12/01/2007 pg. 73
Booklist Editors Choice/Adult 01/01/2008 pg. 9
Poder Hispanic 05/01/2008 pg. 70
Commonweal 06/20/2008 pg. 26
Entertainment Weekly 06/27/2008 pg. 100
Time 07/14/2008 pg. 68
Vanity Fair 11/01/2008 pg. 112
Entertainment Weekly 11/25/2011 pg. 77

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.