The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a 2007 novel by the Dominican American author Junot Díaz. Its title character is a young overweight Dominican American man obsessed with fantasy novels, superhero comics, and tabletop role-playing games. Using Spanish neologisms, magical realism, and references to late-20th-century nerd culture, Díaz weaves a multigenerational family saga chronicling life under the murderous Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and the subsequent Dominican diaspora to the United States. Widely praised as one of the greatest novels of the 21st century, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other works by Diaz include Drown, “Wildwood”, and This Is How You Lose Her.

Plot Summary

In Part 1, the narrator introduces readers to Oscar de León, an overweight Dominican American high schooler living in Paterson, New Jersey, in the late 1980s. Unlike most of his Dominican peers, Oscar loves The Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, and other staples of 20th-century nerd culture. Although Oscar obsesses over women, he is sorely lacking in confidence and thus hasn’t kissed a girl since he was seven years old.