Summary

A family curse, mysteriously missing manuscripts and one man’s love trials are the focus of the novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz. Three generations of the Cabral family have been afflicted with a curse believed to have been put on them by the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. The story — narrated by Lola, the sister of the main character, and Yunior, his best friend — is full of street corner slang, Spanish phrases and references to modern culture. Through the novel, Lola, Yunior and Oscar try in their own ways to understand the cause of the Cabral family’s bad luck and find some way to put an end to it.

Oscar, the hero of the novel, has one brief spell of luck with females when he is seven. He dates both Maritza Chacon and Olga Polanco...