--- title: Lin-Manuel Miranda and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao description: Hear the Hamilton creator read from the contemporary classic canonical: https://time.com/4607247/lin-manuel-miranda-brief-wondrous-life-oscar-wao/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-20T15:15:03.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T02:23:44.309Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Hear Lin-Manuel Miranda Read "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" og:description: The Hamilton creator was tapped for the new audiobook of the contemporary classic og:url: https://time.com/4607247/lin-manuel-miranda-brief-wondrous-life-oscar-wao/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Hear Lin-Manuel Miranda Read "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" twitter:description: The Hamilton creator was tapped for the new audiobook of the contemporary classic twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Exclusive: Hear Lin-Manuel Miranda Narrate Junot Diaz's _The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_ by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Dec 20, 2016 3:15 PM UTC by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Dec 20, 2016 3:15 PM UTC Less than 10 years after its original publication, [Junot Diaz’s](http://time.com/3843822/charlie-hebdo-pen-award-protest/) [_The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594483299/?tag=timecom-20) stands as a contemporary American classic. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, the bestselling novel has already infiltrated assigned reading lists for high school and college students alike, delighting readers as it blends a story of the Dominican-American experience with magical realism and inarguably terrific writing. It’s hard to imagine how the book could get any better—but fans of [_Hamilton_](http://time.com/4588683/hamilton-mixtape-live/) will be charmed by the new audiobook version, narrated by musical maestro [Lin-Manuel Miranda](http://time.com/4595248/j-k-rowling-lin-manuel-miranda-harry-potter-twitter/). In an exclusive excerpt for TIME, Miranda reads from the section where the protagonist Oscar’s mother learns she is pregnant. The narrator explains why she leaked the news to the neighborhood in one of the most frequently quoted lines from the novel: “Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can’t exist without one.” The new audiobook, from Penguin Audio, is out Tuesday. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4607247/lin-manuel-miranda-brief-wondrous-life-oscar-wao/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4607247/lin-manuel-miranda-brief-wondrous-life-oscar-wao/"},"headline":"Exclusive: Hear Lin-Manuel Miranda Narrate Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao","datePublished":"2016-12-20T15:15:03.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T02:23:44.309Z","description":"Hear the Hamilton creator read from the contemporary classic","url":"https://time.com/4607247/lin-manuel-miranda-brief-wondrous-life-oscar-wao/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sarah Begley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4607247/lin-manuel-miranda-brief-wondrous-life-oscar-wao/","name":"Exclusive: Hear Lin-Manuel Miranda Narrate Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao"}}]}] ```