The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao owes a great debt to other classic of magic realism such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude and the stories of Jorge Luis Borges. It also slots into the genre of immigration and diaspora literature and thus could be read in conjunction with myriad other novels in the genre, like Zadie Smith's White Teeth.
It is also deeply rooted in the sci-fi fantasy canon, given Oscar and Yunior's broad knowledge of and constant referencing of same. It references not only Lord of the Rings and the work of H.P. Lovecraft, but many other less well-known science fiction authors. It would be interesting to read the graphic novel Watchmen,...
