The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead/Penguin) has won the 2007 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, given by the Mercantile Library Center. The judges wrote:
"Things have never been easy for Oscar, 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 Fukœ--the curse that has haunted the 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.
"Diaz 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."
The finalists for the award were:
"Things have never been easy for Oscar, 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 Fukœ--the curse that has haunted the 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.
"Diaz 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."
The finalists for the award were:
- Bearing the Body by Ehud Havazelet (FSG)
- Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski (FSG)
- Finn by Jon Clinch (Random House)
- Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon (HarperCollins)
- The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander (Knopf)
- Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman (Pantheon)
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Among recipients of the 2007 Presidential Medal of Honor, announced yesterday by the White House, are:
- Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird
- Brian Lamb, co-founder and CEO of C-Span and host of Booknotes on Book TV from 1989-2004
- Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God (Free Press)
- University of Chicago economist and Nobel laureate Gary Becker, author of The Economics of Discrimination, A Treatise on the Family and The Economics of Life.