Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

This 2007 novel was published during my second year of graduate school, and you’d have thought Christ returned to earth. Renowned as a short-story master for a decade, Díaz had come through with an ample novel, really three novels in one: an immigrant American bildungsroman, a Caribbean magical realist family saga, and—the newest element—a nerd culture cri de coeur bristling with references to fantasy fiction, anime, role-playing games, and comic books. The novel immediately went onto every syllabus from Intro to Lit to Seminar in Advanced Semiotics.