Our Shining Moments of the Decade

The Wondrous Life of Junot Diaz

Junot Diaz's award winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao effectively changed the face of modern fiction. The Dominican born, American bred Diaz tells the story of a sci-fi obsessed, overweight young Dominican boy growing up in Patterson, NJ—interweaving the novel with rich and lengthy footnotes touching on the complex history of his ancestral homeland. Wao recieved an outpouring of critical acclaim, finding it's way to the number one spot on countless best-of-the-year book lists and winning both the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2008.