Books: A Hyphenate Fanboy in Exile

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DON'T TELL HIS PUBLICISTS, but Junot Díaz has a new book out. Eleven years after a lean and brutal collection of interconnected short stories called "Drown" put the Dominican-American writer on the book-scene big board, he's finally following it up.

Díaz's first novel, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," negotiates cultures, classes and types as briskly as some people return e-mails. Santo Domingo to Nueba Yor, hooker to dictator, dungeonmaster to lothario — the tale leaps from national history to personal tragedy to bedroom fantasy with a tough comic sureness.

The author, who reads and signs Friday evening at the Borders in Baileys Crossroads, rightly assumes that much of his readership is unfamiliar with the foreign-policy disasters that link the U.S. to the land of his birth. His footnotes (mainly about tyrant-in-chief Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molinai and his pals) are the funniest this side of David Foster Wallace. But they are far more bitter.

The murderous Trujillo regime is in many ways the driving force behind Oscar's life, forcing his family to the States and the misfit protagonist into a world of sci-fi, anime and woebegone chicklessness. The introverted, unsettled domain of the nerd is the perfect metaphor for exile.

But Díaz was sure to serve no whine before its time. Oscar, who could have been a tiresome and unsympathetic character, emerges as an improbably likable hero, doggedly pursuing his obscure objects of desire. He and the generations that produced him are deeply imagined and fully realized, but at roughly 12 days per page, Díaz's workflow leaves much to be desired.

It's porbably smart to read "Oscar" now. Read "Drown," too. Then check back in when "Halo 7" hits the shelves.

» Borders Crossroads Center, Route 7 & Columbia Pike, Falls Church; Fri.,7:30 p.m., free; 703-998-0404.

Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon
Photo by Lily Oei