Books by Junot Díaz

Drown

by Junot Díaz

From the beloved and award-winning author Junot Díaz, a spellbinding saga of a family’s journey through the New World.

A coming-of-age story of unparalleled power, Drown introduced the world to Junot Díaz's exhilarating talents. It also introduced an unforgettable narrator— Yunior, the haunted, brilliant young man who tracks his family’s precarious journey from the barrios of Santo Domingo to the tenements of industrial New Jersey, and their epic passage from hope to loss to something like love. Here is the soulful, unsparing book that made Díaz a literary sensation.

This Is How You Lose Her

by Junot Díaz

Finalist for the 2012 National Book Award
A Time and People Top 10 Book of 2012
Finalist for the 2012 Story Prize
Chosen as a notable or best book of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The LA Times, Newsday, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, the iTunes bookstore, and many more...

"Electrifying." –The New York Times Book Review

“Exhibits the potent blend of literary eloquence and street cred that earned him a Pulitzer Prize… Díaz’s prose is vulgar, brave, and poetic.” –O Magazine

From the award-winning author, a stunning collection that celebrates the haunting, impossible power of love.

On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In a New Jersey laundry room, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness--and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses.

In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, these stories lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”

This Is How You Lose Her

by Junot Díaz

Finalist for the 2012 National Book Award
A Time and People Top 10 Book of 2012
Finalist for the 2012 Story Prize
Chosen as a notable or best book of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The LA Times, Newsday, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, the iTunes bookstore, and many more...

"Electrifying." –The New York Times Book Review

“Exhibits the potent blend of literary eloquence and street cred that earned him a Pulitzer Prize… Díaz’s prose is vulgar, brave, and poetic.” –O Magazine

From the award-winning author, a stunning collection that celebrates the haunting, impossible power of love.

On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In a New Jersey laundry room, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness--and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses.

In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, these stories lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”

The Best American Short Stories 2016

by Junot Díaz, Heidi Pitlor

“The literary ‘Oscars’ features twenty outstanding examples of the best of the best in American short stories.” —Shelf Awareness for Readers

The Best American Short Stories 2016 will be selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz. He brings "one of the most distinctive and magnetic voices in contemporary fiction: limber, streetwise, caffeinated and wonderfully eclectic" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times) to the collection.

Best African American Fiction: 2009

by Walter Dean Myers, Junot Díaz, Mat Johnson

Introducing the first volume in an exciting new annual anthology featuring the year’s most outstanding fiction by some of today’s finest African American writers.

From stories that depict black life in times gone by to those that address contemporary issues, this inaugural volume gathers the very best recent African American fiction. Created during a period of electrifying political dialogue and cultural, social, and economic change that is sure to captivate the imaginations of writers and readers for years to come, these short stories and novel excerpts explore a rich variety of subjects. But most of all, they represent exceptional artistry.

Here you’ll find work by both established names and up-and-comers, ranging from Walter Dean Myers to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mat Johnson, and Junot Díaz. They write about subjects as diverse as the complexities of black middle-class life and the challenges of interracial relationships, a modern-day lynching in the South and a young musician’s coming-of-age during the Harlem Renaissance. What unites these stories, whether set in suburbia, in eighteenth-century New York City, or on a Caribbean island that is supposed to be “brown skin paradise,” is their creators’ passionate engagement with matters of the human heart.

Masterful and engaging, this first volume of Best African American Fiction features stories you’ll want to savor, share, and return to again and again.

Please click the "Behind the Book" link for contributor’s bios.

La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao (Vintage Espanol) (Spanish Edition)

by Junot Díaz

Una crónica familiar que abarca tres generaciones y dos países, La breve y maravillosa vida de Oscar Wao cuenta la historia del gordiflón y solitario Oscar de León en su intento de convertirse en el J.R.R. Tolkien Dominicano y su desafortunada búsqueda del amor.

Pero Oscar sólo es la última víctima del fukú —una maldición que durante generaciones ha perseguido a su familia, condenándoles a vidas de tortura, sufrimiento y amor desdichado. Con unos personajes inolvidables y una prosa vibrante e hipnótica, esta novela confirma a Junot Díaz como una de las mejores y más deslumbrantes voces de nuestra época, y nos ofrece una sobrecogedora visión de la inagotable capacidad humana para perseverar y arriesgarlo todo por amor.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Winner of:The Pulitzer PrizeThe National Book Critics Circle AwardThe Anisfield-Wolf Book AwardThe Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel PrizeA Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year

One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more…

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.

Islandborn

by Junot Díaz

From New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz comes a debut picture book about the magic of memory and the infinite power of the imagination.

A 2019 Pura Belpré Honor Book for Illustration

Every kid in Lola's school was from somewhere else.
Hers was a school of faraway places.

So when Lola's teacher asks the students to draw a picture of where their families immigrated from, all the kids are excited. Except Lola. She can't remember The Island—she left when she was just a baby. But with the help of her family and friends, and their memories—joyous, fantastical, heartbreaking, and frightening—Lola's imagination takes her on an extraordinary journey back to The Island. As she draws closer to the heart of her family's story, Lola comes to understand the truth of her abuela's words: “Just because you don't remember a place doesn't mean it's not in you.”

Gloriously illustrated and lyrically written, Islandborn is a celebration of creativity, diversity, and our imagination's boundless ability to connect us—to our families, to our past and to ourselves.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

by Junot Díaz

Winner of:
The Pulitzer Prize
The National Book Critics Circle Award
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize
A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year

One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more...

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Oscar is 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 Fukú—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.

Díaz 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 Díaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

by Junot Díaz

Winner of:
The Pulitzer Prize
The National Book Critics Circle Award
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize
A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year

One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more...

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read and named one of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.

Así es como la pierdes / This Is How You Lose Her: Relatos (Spanish Edition)

by Junot Díaz

Así es como la pierdes es un libro sobre mujeres que quitan el sentido y sobre el amor y el ardor. Y sobre la traición porque a veces traicionamos lo que más queremos, y también es un libro sobre el suplicio que pasamos después –los ruegos, las lágrimas, la sensación de estar atravesado un campo de minas– para intentar recuperar lo que perdimos. Aquello que creíamos que no queríamos, que no nos importaba. Estos cuentos nos enseñan las leyes fijas del amor: que la desesperanza de los padres, la acaban sufriendo los hijos, que lo que les hacemos a nuestros ex amantes nos lo harán inevitablemente a nosotros, y que aquello de “amar al prójimo como a uno mismo” no funciona bajo la influencia de Eros. Pero sobre todo, estos cuentos nos recuerdan que el ardor siempre triunfa sobre la experiencia, y que el amor, cuando llega de verdad, necesita más de una vida para desvanecerse.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Finalist for the 2012 National Book Award
A Time and People Top 10 Book of 2012Finalist for the 2012 Story PrizeChosen as a notable or best book of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The LA Times, Newsday, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, the iTunes bookstore, and many more...
"Electrifying." –The New York Times Book Review
“Exhibits the potent blend of literary eloquence and street cred that earned him a Pulitzer Prize… Díaz’s prose is vulgar, brave, and poetic.” –O Magazine
From the award-winning author, a stunning collection that celebrates the haunting, impossible power of love.
On a beach in the Dominican Republic, a doomed relationship flounders. In a New Jersey laundry room, a woman does her lover’s washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball bat and glove. At the heart of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible Yunior, a young hardhead whose longing for love is equaled only by his recklessness--and by the extraordinary women he loves and loses.
In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, these stories lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”

Negocios

by Junot Díaz

El lector tiene en sus manos una colección de relatos que viene precedida de una enorme expectación. Su autor, seleccionado por Newsweek como uno de los diez nuevos rostros para el noventa y seis, nos transporta desde los pueblos y parajes polvorientos de su tierra natal, la República Dominicana, hasta los barrios industrials y el paisaje urbano de New Jersey, bajo un horizonte de chimeneas humeantes. La obra triunfal que marcó el arranque literario de Junot Díaz puede ahora disfrutarse en una edición en español que conserva en su integridad la fuerza desabrida y la delicadeza del texto original.Los niños y jóvenes que pueblan las páginas de Negocios gravitan sin sosiego por territorios marginales, a mitad de camino entre la inocencia y la experiencia, entre la curiosidad infantil y la crueldad más descarnada. Criados en hogares abandonados por el padre, donde todo se sostiene gracias a la férrea abegación de la madre, estos adolescentes acarician sueños de independencia, asomándose con recelo a un mundo donde intuyen que no hay un lugar reservado para ellos. En estos diez relatos la prosa de Junot Díaz oscila con sabiduría entre el humor, la desolación y la ternura, desplegando en cada página un estilo palpitante de vida.

Negocios / Drown (Vintage Espanol) (Spanish Edition)

by Junot Díaz

El lector tiene en sus manos una colección de relatos que viene precedida de una enorme expectación. Su autor, seleccionado por Newsweek como uno de los diez nuevos rostros para el noventa y seis, nos transporta desde los pueblos y parajes polvorientos de su tierra natal, la República Dominicana, hasta los barrios industrials y el paisaje urbano de New Jersey, bajo un horizonte de chimeneas humeantes. La obra triunfal que marcó el arranque literario de Junot Díaz puede ahora disfrutarse en una edición en español que conserva en su integridad la fuerza desabrida y la delicadeza del texto original.
Los niños y jóvenes que pueblan las páginas de Negocios gravitan sin sosiego por territorios marginales, a mitad de camino entre la inocencia y la experiencia, entre la curiosidad infantil y la crueldad más descarnada. Criados en hogares abandonados por el padre, donde todo se sostiene gracias a la férrea abegación de la madre, estos adolescentes acarician sueños de independencia, asomándose con recelo a un mundo donde intuyen que no hay un lugar reservado para ellos. En estos diez relatos la prosa de Junot Díaz oscila con sabiduría entre el humor, la desolación y la ternura, desplegando en cada página un estilo palpitante de vida.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

From the beloved and award-winning author Junot Díaz, a spellbinding saga of a family’s journey through the New World.

A coming-of-age story of unparalleled power, Drown introduced the world to Junot Díaz’s exhilarating talents. It also introduced an unforgettable narrator— Yunior, the haunted, brilliant young man who tracks his family’s precarious journey from the barrios of Santo Domingo to the tenements of industrial New Jersey, and their epic passage from hope to loss to something like love. Here is the soulful, unsparing book that made Díaz a literary sensation.

Global Dystopias

by Junot Díaz

Stories, essays, and interviews explore dystopias that may offer lessons for the present.

As the recent success of Margaret Atwood's novel-turned-television hit Handmaid's Tale shows us, dystopia is more than minatory fantasy; it offers a critical lens upon the present. “It is not only a kind of vocabulary and idiom,” says bestselling author and volume editor Junot Diaz. “It is a useful arena in which to begin to think about who we are becoming.”

Bringing together some of the most prominent writers of science fiction and introducing fresh talent, this collection of stories, essays, and interviews explores global dystopias in apocalyptic landscapes and tech futures, in robot sentience and forever war. Global Dystopias engages the familiar horrors of George Orwell's 1984 alongside new work by China Miéville, Tananarive Due, and Maria Dahvana Headley. In “Don't Press Charges, and I Won't Sue,” award-winning writer Charlie Jane Anders uses popularized stigmas toward transgender people to create a not-so-distant future in which conversion therapy is not only normalized, but funded by the government. Henry Farrell surveys the work of dystopian forebear Philip K. Dick and argues that distinctions between the present and the possible future aren't always that clear. Contributors also include Margaret Atwood and award-winning speculative writer, Nalo Hopkinson.

In the era of Trump, resurgent populism, and climate denial, this collection poses vital questions about politics and civic responsibility and subjectivity itself. If we have, as Díaz says, reached peak dystopia, then Global Dystopias might just be the handbook we need to survive it.

Contributors
Charlie Jane Anders, Margaret Atwood, Adrienne Bernhard, Mark Bould, Thea Costantino, Tananarive Due, Henry Farrell, JR Fenn, Maria Dahvana Headley, Nalo Hopkinson, Mike McClelland, Maureen McHugh, China Miéville, Jordy Rosenberg, Peter Ross, Sumudu Samarwickrama

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

by Junot Díaz

The long-awaited-and thrillingly satisfying, genuinely original- first novel from the unmistakable voice behind the story collection Drown.

Lola: Edición en español de ISLANDBORN (Spanish Edition)

by Junot Díaz

Del exitoso autor en ventas según el New York Times y ganador del Premio Pulitzer, Junot Díaz, nos llega su primer álbum ilustrado acerca de la magia de los recuerdos y el poder infinito de la imaginación, ¡ahora en español!

Todos los niños en la escuela de Lola venían de otra parte. Era una escuela de lugares lejanos.

Así que cuando la maestra de Lola pide a sus alumnos que hagan un dibujo del lugar del que emigraron sus familias, todos los niños se entusiasman. Todos, menos Lola. Ella no recuerda la Isla: se fue cuando era apenas un bebé. Pero con la ayuda de su familia y de sus amigos, todos ellos con sus recuerdos —felices, maravillosos, tristes, aterradores—, la imaginación de Lola la lleva en un extraordinario viaje de regreso a la Isla. Cuando finalmente se acerca al corazón de la historia de su familia, Lola llega a entender el sentido de las palabras de su abuela: «Que no recuerdes un lugar, no significa que no sea parte de ti».
Espléndidamente ilustrado, y escrito en una bella prosa, Lola es un homenaje a la creatividad, a la diversidad y a la imaginación sin límites, que nos permite conectar con nuestra familia, nuestro pasado y con nosotros mismos.

Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse

by Paolo Bacigalupi, Orson Scott Card, George R. R. Martin, Junot Díaz

ITS THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT...

For decades, the apocalypse and its aftermath have yielded some of the most exciting short stories of all time. From David Brin's seminal The Postman to Hugh Howey's Deep Blood Kettle and Tananarive Due's prescient Patient Zero, the end of the world continues to thrill.

This companion volume to the critically acclaimed WASTELANDS offers thirty of the finest examples of post-apocalyptic short fiction, with works by:

Ann Aguirre
Megan Arkenberg
Paolo Bacigalupi
Christopher Barzak
Lauren Beukes
David Brin
Orson Scott Card
Junot Díaz
Cory Doctorow
Tananarive Due
Toiya Kristen
Finley Milo
Joe R. Lansdale
George R. R. Martin
Jack McDevitt
Seanan McGuire
Maureen F. McHugh
D. Thomas Minton
Rudy Rucker & Bruce Sterling
Ramsey Shehadeh
Robert Silverberg

Award-winning editor John Joseph Adams has once again assembled a who’s who of short fiction, and the result is nothing short of mind-blowing.

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PRAISE FOR WASTELANDS: Everything that is best about the trope, from bleak, empty worlds to beacons of hope. - Booklist. The best anthology of any kind I have read to date. - Grasping for the Wind. A great collection that gets my highest recommendation.- Bookgasm

This Is How You Lose Her Deluxe Edition

by Junot Díaz

A must-have collector's edition of Junot Díaz’s bestseller and National Book Award finalist, brilliantly illustrated by celebrated comic artist Jaime Hernandez

A major New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award, This Is How You Lose Her is Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Díaz’s celebration of love in all its facets—obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love. For this gorgeous new edition, Jaime Hernandez—deemed “one of the twentieth century’s most significant comic creators”—has crafted stunning full-page illustrations, one for each story, that brilliantly capture the love-haunted spirit of the book and of the gutsy women whom irrepressible, irresistible Yunior loves and loses. A true work of art, inside and out, this is a keepsake that fans will treasure and new readers will delight in discovering.