Ten best debut novels of the decade (2000-2009)

The staff at Paste magazine came up with a list of the ten best debut novels of the decade (2000-2009).

One title on the list:

2. Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao [Riverhead] (2007)

There’s a curse, and there’s a nerd. And through the huge, ungainly body of one, we learn about the other—and, along with it, about science fiction, high school, heartbreak and all the blessings and burden of family, ethnicity, history, life. It’s a story about storytelling itself, how to reconcile all these other lives with our own (brief or wondrous or otherwise), its lessons illuminated in the voices of Junot Diaz’s round, warm characters, funny and fraught and realer than real. Rachael Maddux

Read about another book on the list.

See Junot Díaz's most important books and the Page 99 Test: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

--Marshal Zeringue