Not Drowning But Waving

Eleven years after Drown, his heralded short story collection, Junot Diaz returns with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a novel that's made Time magazine exhaust superlatives: "...so astoundingly great that in a fall crowded with heavyweights--Richard Russo, Philip Roth--Díaz is a good bet to run away with the field."

(A short extract that appeared earlier in The New Yorker is reproduced here.)