Unless you're the jealous type, it's fun to read reviews of Junot Díaz in mainstream American papers. There may not be an American writer alive whose ratio of positive to negative press is more favourable; critics do backflips for the guy. Unfortunately, given the corporate prudery of their employers, they can't quote his most perfervid prose. I offer this from his new novel, a riff on a henchman of the Dominican dictator Trujillo:

I mean, what straight middle-aged brother has not attempted to regenerate himself through the alchemy of young pussy and . . . Beli had some of the finest pussy around. The sexy isthmus of her waist alone could have launched a thousand yolas, and while the upper-class boys might have had their issues with her, the Gangster was a man of the world, had fucked more prietas than you could count. He didn't care about that shit. What he wanted was to suck Beli's enormous breasts, to fuck her pussy until it was a mango-juice swamp . . . As the viejos say, clavo saca clavo.

LRB 20 March 2008 | PDF Download