The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Oscar is a sweet, overweight and hopelessly romantic young man in New Jersey, a devotee of science fiction and fantasy who hopes to be the Dominican Tolkien and, above all, of finding love. He shares a home with his traditional Dominican mother and his defiant sister, and the family believes it is dogged by fukú, a curse that pursued them from Santo Domingo to the United States. Many chapters leave Oscar to tell the stories of his sister, his mother and his grandfather, reaching back to the Dominican Republic under the long dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. A narrator who talks straight to the reader, switches between languages and adds footnotes on Dominican history shows how centuries of national and family misfortune weigh on Oscar's own life.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family, Migration (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States, Dominican Republic

First published

2007

Author's age

39 when first published

ISBN

9781594489587 (Riverhead Books, United States)

9781594483295 (Riverhead Books, United States)

More

Wikidata