The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao - Juno Diaz (2007)

The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao is the story of a Dominican family set againt the recent past and present of their people and their country and illuminated, somewhat, through the lens of modern fantasy literature. This book is about how kak it is to be young and in a desparate search for love and identity while being fucked over variously by yourself, your family, your society and your national history, but it is magicaI and brilliantly written. It is great to read in that The Life Of Pi, White Tiger way that makes the characters seems completely real and completely unreal at the same time. The book is also peppered with Dominican slang and while there are no translations when the footnotes do appear they provide an in-depth-while-extremely-off-the-cuff insight into the gruesome history of the Dominican Republic.

Oscar Wao, like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, is immersed in the sounds and smells of an exotic Latin American world, only this time the story manages to go back and forth across the divide that separates an almost magical third world and the first world urban jungle. It is an awesome story – hilarious, insightful and devastating - told with the language of Dominican/US youth culture and if it leaves you a bit overwhellmed that feeling is easily pushed aside by the sense of how lucky you are to have read it in the first place.