Mapped
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz
The Dominican half of a story that runs between New Jersey and the island. Díaz sets the family's fortunes against the long shadow of the Trujillo dictatorship: the walled Zona Colonial, the seafront Malecón, a quiet capital neighbourhood, the cane fields inland where the family curse turns violent, and Baní to the west, where the line begins. The map anchors on Santo Domingo; Oscar's Paterson sits outside it, to the north.
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The Feast of the Goat
Mario Vargas Llosa
The last day of the dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic for thirty-one years, and the assassination that ends him, braided with the return of Urania Cabral to the city thirty-five years later to face what the regime did to her. The capital, then renamed Ciudad Trujillo, is mapped precisely: the National Palace, the seafront Malecón where the assassins wait, the torture cells of La Cuarenta, and the Mahogany House at San Cristóbal outside town where the Goat took the girls chosen for him.
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