The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

By: Junot Díaz

Narrated by: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Karen Olivo

Read by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony Award®-winning creator and star of the musical Hamilton, and Tony Award®-winning actress, Karen Olivo. This brilliant narration adds another layer of lyricism and depth to this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic novel.


Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku: the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.

Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience - and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.

Make u miss el patio in each of its chapters

It was weird. Different. But fun and funny. Sprinkle with magic and sci-fi while at the same time so damn accurate and truthful.

What did I love?
Each and every chapter were Lola was narrating

What did I like?
- The ubiquitous Dominican references
- The sprinkle of Dominican slang
- And Lin Manuel Miranda trying to pronounce things in Spanish which are not really Spanish but Dominican.

What I didn't like?
- Some of the shifting. Honestly I love a good complicated history line, with some shifting narrator. Damn that's my kind of shit. But every time the history started turning really political/historical I couldn't help but to roll up my eyes and doze off. I'm not sure if it was because of the story itself, or if it was because of that history teacher I once had that made me hate history or simply because it's easier to silently shame Germany and the Nazy for the holocaust but it's way harder to see our role in the our own Haitian holocaust.

Favorite Quote:
That’s white people for you. They lose a cat and it’s an all-points bulletin, but we Dominicans, we lose a daughter and we might not even cancel our appointment at the salon.

So good on so many levels !

Loved the narration, LMM’s energy and pace and effortless flow between English and Spanish was so perfect and engaging.

And the National history, woven with family history, woven with personal history so well done.

Ok I gotta start listening all over again

@ me next time

comic book nerds of the world, unite and take over. hand it over, hand it over.

Incredible narration

Worth every minute to hear the language come alive in Miranda's expressive voice! Loved it!

the tell of a book

this book takes you through history and time of dark era in the Dominican republic. the way he describes every characters makes you understand more about who they are . I love this book so much