Readers familiar with Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and his acclaimed collection of connected short stories, This is How You Lose Her, will be familiar with Yunior, the character who narrates most of the stories in Drown.

This is where it all began. At 27, Díaz published this, his debut – and although he was received with accolades and great expectations by the literary world, he wouldn’t publish Oscar Wao for another twelve years.

Lovers of Díaz’s straight-talking, striking prose will appreciate how much skill and how much sheer ability he already had with his first collection. Drown explores Yunior’s childhood – first in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and then in New Jersey – and with it, the stories of deprivation, longing and betrayal in the lives of his family and friends.

The first nine years of Yunior’s life are spent in the barrios of Santo Domingo, while his mother works for almost no money at a chocolate factory. His father is in the United States, and rarely writes or calls, even though he sends them money.

In the title story, we meet Yunior as a young man, and learn of his confusing sexual experiences with his male best friend. In Negocios, Yunior tells the story of Ramon, his father, who leaves his young family behind to make a life in the United States, promising to eventually bring them all over.

In Ysrael Yunior and his brother Rafa become obsessed with a young boy whose face was mutilated by a pig. In Fiesta, 1980, Yunior’s family is finally reunited in the States, and he must reckon with his father’s violent temper and infidelity to his mother.

All in all, a brilliant and original collection, which will elicit compassion and frustration, sadness and mirth, guided by the virtuoso hand of a great storyteller.

Published in 1997.