A decade after his bestselling and widely acclaimed short story collection Drown, Diaz returns with his first full-length novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Oscar, a pining nerd in the Dominican ghetto, dreams of becoming his people's J.R.R. Tolkein. Diaz's protagonist is a sweet, but tremendously overweight boy. An unassuming hero in a saga that is humorous and acutely aware.

The Wao family's cursed fate, referred to as fuku americanus, is blamed for the tragedies and misfortunes that has spanned across the Wao family for generations. Set in New Jersey and Santo Domingo, the horrors of Trujillo's regime and the struggles of American emigration are buffered by the comic relief of Oscar, who walks the line between tragic and pitiable. The novel is dabbled with a heady mixture magical realism, hard irony, and satire. Two strains entwine and are ever-present: the macrocosm of the political situation of the Dominican Republic and the microcosm of the Wao family.

Diaz's prose is artfully restrained and chock-full of a gratifying balance of vociferous energy and streetwise sensibility. In spite of its inevitable ending that came off a tad maladroit, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is another compelling effort from Diaz.