Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Junot Diaz
Four and a half stars
Don’t mess with the Dominican Republic. The fuku will get you.
Just ask Oscar Wao. Hopelessly nerdy, obsessed with obscure genres and sci-fi and fantasy to the point where getting a girl to make eye contact is a victory in itself (join the club). His entire family appears to have gotten on the island’s bad side, infected with the curse of fuku. Fuku is the worst form of curse and once afflicted there is very little one can do to be rid of it. Belia, his mother, was born young, beautiful, proud and not very wise, getting mixed up early with the wrong people during the climax of the Dominican Republic’s military dictatorship. Oscar Wao himself is a grade-school Casanova who became pimple-faced and obese in his teenage years.
Now, the odds of him living up to Dominican standards of manliness are very unlikely indeed. At the end of the day he will get what he wants . . . and suffer for it. The book’s characters find themselves punished greatly and probably disproportionately for their successes as much as their sins. As much a coming-of-age novel as a glimpse into the political upheaval in the Dominican, Junot Diaz’s book is alive with the very real spirit of his characters and the tumult swirling around them.
The book is mixed with a strong Dominican flavour, with many references to the dictator Trujillio, the personification of fuku. Fuku is something that will send your life spiralling into uncomfortable directions. The characters of the book are affected equally by the human form of fuku: race and love, with perfect Dominicans being very machismo and very white.
The book is littered with references to comics, sci-fi and other nerdy pursuits. Diaz is one of us. Be ye warned. Not that you have to be a nerd to enjoy it, it just helps. No matter where you stand on the social spectrum, you will enjoy this book. In particular, those who enjoy sci-fi stuff and feel like they’ve been smacked by the fuku.