Selected from the Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

oscar hijuelos seth margolis literacy volunteers of new york city staff

Cesar and Nestor Castillo, two very different Cuban brothers, recall their heyday in 1950s New York when they led an orchestra, were known as "the Mambo Kings," and appeared on the "I Love Lucy" show.

Genres fictionhistorical fictionmusicliteratureliterary fictionnovelsnew yorkamericanclassicsbook club

63 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1989

Series

Mambo Kings

Literary awards

pulitzer prize, national book critics circle award, national book award finalist,

Places

new york city new york, manhattan new york city new york,

This edition

Format: 63 pages, Paperback
Published: September 1, 1996 by Literacy Volunteers of
ISBN: 9780929631530
ASIN: 0929631536
Language: English

About the author

oscar hijuelos

Oscar Hijuelos (born August 24, 1951) was an American novelist. He is the first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Hijuelos was born in New York City, in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, to Cuban immigrant parents. He attended the Corpus Christi School, public schools, and later attended Bronx Community College, Lehman College, and Manhattan Community College before matriculating into and studying writing at the City College of New York (B.A., 1975; M.A. in Creative Writing, 1976). He then practiced various professions before taking up writing full time. His first novel, Our House in the Last World, was published in 1983 and received the 1985 Rome Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Rome. His second novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was adapted for the film The Mambo Kings in 1992 and as a Broadway musical in 2005.

Hijuelos has taught at Hofstra University and at Duke University.