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Oscar wants nothing more than to find love — and to become the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien.

He’s the memorable protagonist of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead), by Junot Díaz. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani has hailed the Dominican-American writer and winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award as “one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”

The novel chronicles the life of “ghetto nerd” Oscar, an overweight Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey who’s made miserable by the macho culture that surrounds him. Part of the story also takes place in the Dominican Republic during the reign of the dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Eleanor Wachtel spoke to Junot Díaz from the CBC's New York studio. They talk about why Díaz feels that although his books aren't autobiographical he could have become someone like Oscar, and how growing up in a culture full of machismo prepared him for his move to an American milieu that is just as hyper-masculine. The interview also includes a reading from the book.

First aired September 21, 2008 on Writers & Company. [runs 52:24]

Writers & Company airs on Thursdays at 11:00 p.m. (11:30 in Newfoundland) and on Sunday afternoons (times vary across the country). You can also listen to the show as a podcast.

Coming up
Lsteners in the Toronto area can catch Díaz at the International Festival of Authors next month.