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The Leonard Lopate Show / October 01, 2007 / The Wondrous Debut Novel of Junot Diaz

The Wondrous Debut Novel of Junot Diaz

Monday, October 01, 2007

Fans of Junot Diaz’s 1996 short story collection Drown anxiously awaited his debut novel, and it seems that they won’t be disappointed. In her review for the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani praised The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao calling it “so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets Star Trek meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West.”

Purchase The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao at amazon.com.


Events: Junot Diaz will be speaking
Tuesday, October 2 at 6 pm
The Instituto Cervantes
211 East 49th Street, at Third Avenue
For more information, visit the Instituto Cervantes website.
This event will be mainly in Spanish.

Junot Diaz will be reading along with Annie Proulx
as part of the New New Yorker Festival
Friday, October 5 at 7 pm
Cedar Lake Dance Studios
547 West 26th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues
For tickets, visit the New Yorker Festival website.


Comments

  • [1] Janny from washington heights October 01, 2007 - 01:18PM

    Leonard,

    I just have to say your questions and comments always reveal how racist and Eurocentric you are. You seriously have a superiority complex. OF COURSE the Dominican Republic has a literary tradition and OF COURSE a Dominican kid can like comic books!!!!! You are so very offensive and remind me of what a racist world we live in in which everything that is good and brilliant must come from Europe!!
  • [2] Chad Harris from Ridgewood, Queens October 01, 2007 - 01:26PM

    I concur Janny. This station makes me sick, he would never say anything like that to an Israeli.
  • [3] L. Leo from Rego Park, Queens October 01, 2007 - 03:03PM

    For all, Here are a couple of references to the Dominican Literary tradition. Most of the initial social and political writings about the colonization of the Americas by Europeans and the negative impacts on indigenous civilizations began in the island of Hispaniola (present Dominican Rep. and Haiti).

    Pedro Mir and Juan Bosch are 2 examples of Dominican fictional writing from the 20th century. Though not well recognized, they were pioneers of magical realism and the modern short story in Latin America. There have hundreds of poets, essayists, novelists and and other writers who have made their mark through the centuries in portraying the unique reality of Dominicans and how they fit in the World

    http://www.juanbosch.org/

    http://www.ilangdr.com/en/bosch.asp

    http://books.google.com/books?id=GTr3sO0_EusC&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq=two+pesos+worth+of+water&source=web&ots=vpR2tng9_g&sig=hGvmqo_D0zNnKjLALobMwd-QLm0

    http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Pedro+Mir&ots=lrkZ5BWBfb&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title

This thread is closed.


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