Dublin.– The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz is one of eight finalists for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the largest and most international prize of its kind.

It is awarded to a novel written in English or translated into English and offers a prize of £100,000. Nominations are submitted by library systems from around the world. Other books shortlisted include Ravel by French writer Jean Echenoz, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, The Archivist’s Story by American Travis Holland, The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Norwegian Roy Jacobsen, The Indian Clerk by American David Leavitt, Animal’s People by Indian-British writer Indra Sinha, and Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas.

Junot Díaz’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was greeted with rapturous reviews, including Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times calling it “a book that decisively establishes him as one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”