Díaz’s 2007 first novel, which won the Pulitzer. Oscar de León is an overweight, lovelorn Dominican-American kid in New Jersey — a science fiction and fantasy obsessive who wants, more than anything, to fall in love. The book follows him but keeps widening out: his sister, his mother’s girlhood in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, his grandparents, and the family curse called fukú that the narrator insists is behind all of it. Narrated by a friend of the family in a voice that runs Spanglish, street talk, and Tolkien and Marvel references together, with a lot of the Dominican history delivered in footnotes.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao