Oscar Hijuelos

In Empress of the Splendid Season, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos brings the joys and heartbreaks of twentieth-century America vividly to life: "resounds with sights, tastes, textures and even the humming ambience of deep, well-appointed brownstone apartments" (Los Angeles Times). Lydia Espa a--once a wealthy, spoiled daughter of Cuba--works at a sewing factory in New York. Adjusting to her sharp change of circumstances, missing the days when her prosperous father provided her with every luxury, she ruminates on the incident that drove her away from her homeland in the late 1940s--until she falls in love with Raul, a kindhearted, working-class waiter who sees Lydia as the "Queen of the Congo Line" she used to be: the empress of "the most beautiful and splendid season, which is love." Despite their age difference, a loving marriage follows, as well as two children. Lydia revels in her newfound happiness, but when Raul's health declines, she finds her fortunes reversed yet again. Now working as a cleaning lady, Lydia can't help but contrast her experiences with those of her clients, whose secret lives and day-to-day realities are so starkly different from her own--but over time, the role may prove to be just what she needs to secure a better life for her children. Written with absorbing, magnetic prose, this tenderly rendered novel follows a proud, hardworking woman through the ups and downs of her simple, sensible, and at times heart-wrenching life. It is Hijuelos at his masterful best, a lasting and expert portrayal of the highs and lows of chasing--and living--the "American Dream." Includes a Reading Group Guide.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos comes a "massively engaging...masterpiece of history, music, wonder, and sorrow" about a composer returning to his beloved homeland after WWII (Kirkus, starred review). The year is 1947. Israel Levis, a Cuban composer whose life once revolved around music and love, is finally returning home. En route to Habana, Cuba from Spain, he is a shadow of his former self, disillusioned after he was mistakenly sent to a camp during the Nazi occupation of France. In Habana, he escapes his anguish by reminiscing about his happiest moments before the war, when he lived a life of pleasure and excitement-and had a loving, if unrequited romance with Rita Valladares, the alluring singer who inspired Levis' most famous composition, "Rosas Puras." A tender homage to music, art, and a vibrant country at the edge of modernity, A Simple Habana Melody is a melodic, virtuoso performance from one of America's most talented writers. Includes a reading group guide.

"With "soaring, matchless prose," a Pulitzer Prize winner pens a New York Times bestselling saga of the Montez O'Briens, a rambunctious family of Irish Cuban immigrants comprised of fourteen daughters--and one doggedly masculine son (Publishers Weekly). Irish American Nelson O'Brien fell passionately in love with the poetess Mariela Montez while photographing the ravages of battle in Mariela's native Cuba during the Spanish-American War. After marrying, they moved to the United States to start a new life, settling in a small Pennsylvania town where Nelson took over the Jewel Box Movie Theater. Together, they had a remarkable fifteen children: fourteen daughters and one lone son. In Oscar Hijuelos's The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, the lives, loves, and tragedies of this sprawling Irish Cuban family unfold. Over the course of a century, each member moves in and out of each other's lives, traversing Cuba, New York, California, Alaska, and Ireland, while Margarita--the Montez O'Brien's eldest daughter--ruminates on the nature of femininity, sex, love, and earthly happiness. And as Margarita learns and grows in an overwhelmingly female environment, she can't help but contrast her experiences with those of Emilio, her intensely masculine brother, whose B-movie career in the 1950s has left him adrift and frustrated, with little hope of success. Lush and gorgeously written, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien is a masterwork by one of America's greatest writers. Reckoning with cultural assimilation and complex family dynamics, the novel elicits tears and laughter while tenderly revealing the bounteous heart and exhilarating adventures of a warm, passionate family."

In 1960s New York, Edward Ives is a picture of the American dream. Adopted as a child by a widowed print shop manager, who helped him cultivate a love of drawing, he now has a successful career as an illustrator in advertising, a beautiful home with his wife and muse, Annie, and two loving children. But this idyllic life is brutally wrenched away when Ives's 17-year-old son, Robert-who has just decided to commit his life to the priesthood-is murdered by another teenage boy just before Christmas, a crime of opportunity that proves to be as random as it is senseless. Consumed by grief, Ives withdraws from the world. Grappling with a loss of faith-a force that has guided him steadfastly since childhood-he starts to question every aspect of human existence, contemplating what it really means to live an emotionally and spiritually fulfilling life. This mourning consumes him-until he takes on the monumental task of working through his suffering, and ultimately faces his son's killer. Mr. Ives' Christmas is a tender, passionate story of a man working to rediscover what it means to love, forgive, and live after unspeakable tragedy. It is another tremendous achievement from one of America's most talented writers. Includes a Reading Group Guide.

With "soaring, matchless prose," a Pulitzer Prize winner pens a New York Times bestselling saga of the Montez O'Briens, a rambunctious family of Irish Cuban immigrants comprised of fourteen daughters-and one doggedly masculine son (Publishers Weekly). Irish American Nelson O'Brien fell passionately in love with the poetess Mariela Montez while photographing the ravages of battle in Mariela's native Cuba during the Spanish-American War. After marrying, they moved to the United States to start a new life, settling in a small Pennsylvania town where Nelson took over the Jewel Box Movie Theater. Together, they had a remarkable fifteen children: fourteen daughters and one lone son. In Oscar Hijuelos's The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, the lives, loves, and tragedies of this sprawling Irish Cuban family unfold. Over the course of a century, each member moves in and out of each other's lives, traversing Cuba, New York, California, Alaska, and Ireland, while Margarita-the Montez O'Brien's eldest daughter-ruminates on the nature of femininity, sex, love, and earthly happiness. And as Margarita learns and grows in an overwhelmingly female environment, she can't help but contrast her experiences with those of Emilio, her intensely masculine brother, whose B-movie career in the 1950s has left him adrift and frustrated, with little hope of success. Lush and gorgeously written, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien is a masterwork by one of America's greatest writers. Reckoning with cultural assimilation and complex family dynamics, the novel elicits tears and laughter while tenderly revealing the bounteous heart and exhilarating adventures of a warm, passionate family. Includes a Reading Group Guide.

A first-generation Cuban son comes of age in 1940s New York in the debut--and most autobiographical--novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. New York City, 1944. Hector Santinio is the younger son of Cuban immigrants Alejo and Mercedes. The fraught family of four shares their small, modest apartment with extended relatives in raucous Spanish Harlem. There are parties, dancing, and dreamy, homesick storytelling about their idyllic island. But life's realities are nevertheless harsh in the Santinio family's adoptive land. Mercedes decides to take Hector and his brother Horacio to visit relatives in Cuba to better know her culture. While there, the three-year-old Hector contracts a serious illness that leads to his terrifying year-long hospitalization and recovery back in the United States. Caught between his overly protective mother's fears for his health and his father's macho behavior and disappointments, the adolescent Hector struggles to understand his identity and place in the world. In the aftermath of his father's untimely passing, Hector staggers towards adulthood, haunted by notions of inadequacy and sadness and wrestles with the truth of his father as a deeply flawed but honorable man. This is a jewel-box of a tale whose treasure is the hope and yearning of immigrants in America. Includes a Reading Group Guide.

In this mesmerizing sequel to a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, the "heart-stealing heroine" (Amy Tan) and muse of Cuban musician Nestor Castillo takes readers on the journey of a lifetime with this story of reinvention, romance, and revolution. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Mar a is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, 'Beautiful Mar a of My Soul.'" Now in her sixties, Mar a Garc a y Cifuentes is the lady behind the song, living as an exile in Miami. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor. We now see the Mambo Kings' story through Maria's eyes--and as she thinks back to her days and nights in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the story unfolds. We meet her as an illiterate young woman with unspeakable, head-turning beauty who meets and falls in love with Nestor in Havana, but ultimately chooses to stay involved with a cruel, wealthy lover. When the Cuban Revolution intervenes, Maria and her daughter seek refuge in Miami. And as she finds community with other Cuban women and begins to take lessons at a local college, Maria finally goes from muse to the writer of her own story. Beautiful Mar a of My Soul is a stunning act of reinvention, and another contemporary classic from an extraordinarily talented writer. Includes a Reading Group Guide.

The Pulitzer Prize winning modern classic of two Cuban musician brothers during the mambo-filled nights of 50's New York from literary trailblazer, Oscar Hijuelos. It's 1949 and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to the grand stage of New York City. It is the era of mambo, and the Castillo brothers, workers by day, become stars of the dance halls by night, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth, exuberance, love, and freedom―a golden time that decades later is remembered with nostalgia and deep affection. Hijuelos's portrait of the Castillo brothers, their families, their fellow musicians and lovers, their triumphs and tragedies, recreates the sights and sounds of an era in music and an unsung moment in American life. Exuberantly celebrated from the moment it was published in 1989, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1990 (making Hijuelos the first Hispanic recipient of the award). It remains a perennial bestseller, and the story's themes of cultural fusion and identity are as relevant today as they were over 30 years ago, proving Hijuelos's novel to be a genuine and timeless classic. Includes a Reading Group Guide.

A legendary Cuban-American storyteller enters the Library of America series with a volume gathering three seductive and profound novels about family, desire, music, and loss Oscar Hijuelos (1951-2013) is one of the most acclaimed Latino writers of the last half century. Here are three classic novels that opened a window on the Cuban-American experience, announcing a major new voice in our literature. Hijuelos launched his career with Our House in the Last World (1983), a resonant and nuanced novel portraying one immigrant's family story in midcentury Manhattan. At its center is Hector Santino, whose family has left the "home province of Fidel Castro, Batista, and Desi Arnaz" to settle in New York City, where their ebullient expectations of the good life in America lead, inevitably, to myriad disappointments and adjustments. In his best-known novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989)--a book that Gabriel Garcia Marquez said he would have liked to have written--Hijuelos offers an unforgettable tribute to Latin music and its place in American culture around the middle of the twentieth century. Earning Hijuelos the Pulitzer Prize, the first to be awarded a Latino novelist, The Mambo Kings is also about the fleeting nature of fame and celebrity as well as the more profound themes of love, desire, and family. The poignant Mr. Ives' Christmas (1995), which Hijuelos once noted was an attempt to write a Christmas story "without being corny," takes up themes of loss and redemption in a story that poses the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people. This Library of America edition marks the entrance of Hijuelos into the series with a deluxe hardcover edition that includes as well a newly researched chronology of the author's life.

Twain and Stanley Enter Paradise, the impeccably researched final novel from the author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, follows famed 19th century journalist-explorer Henry Stanley, his wife, the painter Dorothy Tennant, and Stanley's long friendship with Mark Twain, as they venture to Cuba in search of Stanley's father. Told through a fictitious manuscript and imagined correspondence between Stanley, Tennant, and Twain, Hijuelos captures not only the general style of educated 19th century, but manages to pull off the seemingly impossible task of channeling Mark Twain himself. The manuscript--in the works for decades--was found, whole and finished, by Hijuelos's widow after his death. As a companion to the novel, an ebook will be released of Hijuelos' short story "Another Spaniard in the Works" about a musician who meets John Lennon. In the '60s, Lennon had published a book of humorous writings and drawings called "A Spaniard in the Works" and now Hijuelos brings Lennon to life through music and literature.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a contemporary American classic, a book that still captivates and inspires readers more than twenty years after its first publication. Now, in Beautiful Maria of My Soul, Oscar Hijuelos returns to this indelible story, to tell it from the point of view of its beloved heroine, Maria. She's the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, "Beautiful Maria of My Soul." Now in her sixties and living in Miami with her pediatrician daughter, Teresa, Maria remains a beauty, still capable of turning heads. But she has never forgotten Nestor, and as she thinks back to her days--and nights--in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the Mambo Kings story unfolds.

When it was first published in 1989, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love became an international bestselling sensation, winning rave reviews and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that changed the landscape of American literature returns with a new afterword by Oscar Hijuelos. Here is the story of the memorable Castillo brothers, from Havana to New York's Upper West Side. The lovelorn songwriter Nestor and his macho brother Cesar find success in the city's dance halls and beyond playing the rhythms that earn them their band's name, as they struggle with elusive fame and lost love in a richly sensual tale that has become a cultural touchstone and an enduring favorite.

Kuubalainen musiikki veressään veljekset Cesar ja Nestor Castillo saapuvat New Yorkiin ja perustavat yhtyeen, jonka musiikki saa kuulijoiden lanteet keinumaan. Tarina kertoo The MamboKings -yhtyeestä, villien veljesten menestyksestä ja haaksirikoista, kiihkeästä elämästä jonka täyttävät viina, naiset, autot ja rytmimusiikki. Laulu Sieluni kaunis María nostaa veljekset maineeseen ja levymyyntilistojen kärkeen.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION In 1949 two young Cuban musicians, brothers Cesar and Nestor, leave Havana for New York. By day they work hard, by night they are the Mambo Kings: packing out clubs, dance halls and theatres with their sensuous, pulsing Latin music. This is the captivating story of charming, vivacious womanizer Cesar and quiet, romantic Nestor - still nursing an unrequited love for 'beautiful Maria of my soul' - and their changing fortunes as they try to make it big in America.

When Raul Espana falls ill, his wife Lydia, who had enjoyed a life of luxury as the mayor's daughter in Cuba, finds herself cleaning the apartments of rich New Yorkers. Among her employers is Mr Osprey, a paragon of glamour and money who becomes involved in the lives of Lydia and her children.

An exploration of Latino-Caribbean literature written in the United States. Writers whose works are examined include: Julia Alvarez; Judith Ortiz Cofer; Victor Hernandez Cruz; Franklin Gutierrez; Cristina Garcia; Oscar Hijuelos; Carolina Hospital; Rosario Morales; and others.

This title tells the story of Mr Ives, who was adopted from a foundling home as a child. He is first seen in his 50s, very much a product of his times. He has a successful career, a wife and two children. But his dreams are shattered after his son is killed violently over Christmas.