
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Davis
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Staci Snell
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By:
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Junot Diaz
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.
©2007 Junot Diaz (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. and Books on TapeListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
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
"An extraordinarily vibrant book that's fueled by adrenaline-powered prose... A book that decisively establishes [Díaz] as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)
"Díaz finds a miraculous balance. He cuts his barn-burning comic-book plots (escape, ruin, redemption) with honest, messy realism, and his narrator speaks in a dazzling hash of Spanish, English, slang, literary flourishes, and pure virginal dorkiness." (New York Magazine)
"Genius... a story of the American experience that is giddily glorious and hauntingly horrific. And what a voice Yunior has. His narration is a triumph of style and wit, moving along Oscar de Leon's story with cracking, down-low humor, and at times expertly stunning us with heart-stabbing sentences. That Díaz's novel is also full of ideas, that [the narrator's] brilliant talking rivals the monologues of Roth's Zuckerman - in short, that what he has produced is a kick-ass (and truly, that is just the word for it) work of modern fiction - all make The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao something exceedingly rare: a book in which a new America can recognize itself, but so can everyone else." (San Francisco Chronicle)
Featured Article: 14 Best Afro-Latinx Audiobooks to Celebrate Black History Month
Celebrate Black History Month and Afro-Latinx voices with this list of audiobooks. From young adult books to award-winning fiction, best sellers, to hidden gems and debut novels, this list celebrates Afro-Latino and Afro-Latina authors and their stories. These audiobooks are stunning examples of the strength and power of women of color, the diversity of Black Latinx literature, and the many voices of African American storytellers you may not have heard.
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![La maravillosa vida breve de Óscar Wao [The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao] Audiobook By Junot Díaz cover art](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41XXFeAqXcL._SL240_.jpg)










Fabulous listen
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The narrator is great! The story is good, but so much of the book is in Spanish that a lot of the time I'm just guessing at what the author was probably saying (since I don't speak Spanish). The writing, however, is truly original-- unlike anything else I've read.
Great narration
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Well Written But....
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Alright, but didn't live up to the hype
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a cultural plunge
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What did you love best about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao?
Loved the story, loved the characters, loved the dialogue, loved the history, loved the descriptions. This was a fabulous book. I was totally enthralled begining to end.Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes, I drove around the block a couple of times just to get a little more listening in.Any additional comments?
This is a not to be missed listen. Fabulous descriptions and character development. The historical, political aspect was interesting and completely weaved into the story. I don't speak Spanish but I got a good feel for what was being said within the context of the phrase. A wonderfully visual multigenerational story.Wow Wow Wao!!!
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Diaz is the man
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April (Wife of Alberto)
Incredible
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A very charming and enjoyable performance.
A very interesting book and enjoyable.
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Brilliant!
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