Originally published in 1997, Drown instantly garnered terrific acclaim. Moving from the barrios of the Dominican Republic to the struggling urban communities of New Jersey, these heartbreaking, completely original stories established Díaz as one of contemporary fiction's most exhilarating new voices.'There's a new excitement in Drown, the fierce, sharp-edged, painful stories of a young Dominican-American writer, Junot Díaz: a dazzling talented first book'. Hermione Lee, Independent on Sunday, Books of the Year'A voice so original and compelling as to reach far beyond his immediate environment. It has put Díaz at the forefront of American writing'. GQ'He has that rare gift of delineating a recognizable trademark world of his own with just a few deft strokes'. Guardian'Wrings the heart with finely calibrated restraint'. New York Times

Junot Diaz was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He is a graduate of Rutgers University and received his Master of Fine Arts Degree from Cornell University. He teaches creative writing at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was published in 2007 to international acclaim and won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The New York Times described it as'a book which decisively establishes Junot Diaz as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices' and The Times called it'a masterpiece ... its characters are unforgettable.'