The Cheater’s Guide to Love

July 23, 2012

“Finally, when you feel like you can do so without exploding into burning atoms, you open a folder that you’ve kept hidden under your bed. The Doomsday Book.”

Finally, when you feel like you can do so without exploding into burning atoms, you open a folder that you’ve kept hidden under your bed. The Doomsday Book. Copies of all the e-mails and photos from the cheating days, the ones the ex found and compiled and mailed to you a month after she ended it. Dear Yunior, for your next book. Probably the last time she wrote your name.

From The New Yorker.

Tagged asfiction short story

Written by

Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. His debut book, Drown, was met with unprecedented acclaim; it became a national bestseller, earned him a PEN/Malamud Award, and has since grown into a landmark of contemporary literature. His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was published in 2007 and won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. In 2012, the MacArthur Foundation awarded him a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the "Genius Grant", $500,000 over five years, no strings attached.

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Díaz is a professor of writing at MIT.