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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
A lot
Trujillo's dictatorship depicted with full horror: torture, murder, disappearances; Oscar's own fate is violent
Language
A lot
Pervasive profanity; extensive Spanish-English code-switching
Sexual Content
Some
Adult sexual relationships; the sexual violence in the family's history is a recurring theme
Substance Use
Barely any
Some drug and alcohol use
Emotional Intensity
A lot
Intergenerational trauma from one of the Western Hemisphere's worst dictatorships; the weight of inherited suffering; Oscar's death
What this book is about
Oscar de León is an overweight Dominican-American sci-fi nerd from Paterson, New Jersey, who desperately wants to fall in love. But his family carries the fukú—a curse that followed them from the Dominican Republic, from the violence of Trujillo's dictatorship, from the blood of everyone who stood in the wrong place. Díaz's Pulitzer Prize winner moves between New Jersey and the DR, between Oscar's present and his family's past, in prose that fuses Spanish and English, sci-fi references and historical horror, into something entirely original.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Graphic historical violence under Trujillo's regime
Sexual violence in family history
Oscar's fate is devastating
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