The Stranger

Last year, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao earned a sick-making number of awards (including the Pulitzer Prize) and accolades (Michiko Kakutani, the stone-hearted sphinx of the New York Times, gushed orgasmically, making comparisons to David Foster Wallace, Mario Vargas Llosa, Kanye West, and Star Trek). For once, the praise is dead-on. Díaz's fiction reads like hiphop, merging Oscar Wilde, imperialism, Dungeons & Dragons, and ghetto life into a story that's ambitious and entertaining, a great American novel for the 21st century. (Benaroya Hall, 200 University St, 621-2230. 7:30 pm, $10–$50.) by It's Paul Constant's Birthday, Everybody!!!

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