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        The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao


        setting

        Dominican Republic and Patterson New Jersey

        time

        Contemporary

        language

        English

        region

        Latin America

        year published

        2007

        page count

        352

        difficulty

        Intermediate

        main characters

        Oscar Wao

        Rip's impressions

        In the opening pages I think of Salman Rushdie; in the middle Gunter Grass (and others); at the end James Joyce.

        first line

        They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that is was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that is was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles.

        last lines

        (spoiler alert)

        awards

        Pulitzer

        literary tidbits

        What makes this especially unique for me is the novelty of including footnotes , and a lot of Spanish speech and Dominican colloquialisms.