Junot Diaz

Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku – the ancient curse that has haunted his family for...

Junot Diaz made his remarkable debut as a writer with this collection of stories that move from the barrios of the Dominican Republic to the struggling urban communities of New Jersey. The stories are all unflinching and strong, and Diaz's prose crackles with an electric sense of discovery. In Ysrael, two brothers hunt a disfigured boy who hides behind a...

You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda [...] You try it all, but one day she will simply sit up in bed and say, No more. In Yunior, a Dominican-American writer and Harvard professor, Junot Diaz has created an irresistibly erratic protagonist, who sweeps you...

A powerful tale about the magic of memory and the infinite power of the imagination. Every kid in Lola's school was from somewhere else. Hers was a school of faraway places. When Lola's teacher asks the students to draw a picture of where their families immigrated from, all the kids are excited. Except Lola. She can't remember the Island –...