Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

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.

"A rich and sorrowful novel... that alternates crisp narrative with opulent musings--the language of everyday and the language of longing. You finish feeling... ready to throw up your arms and cry, ¡Que bueno es! Mr. Hijuelos is writing music of the heart."--New York Times Book Review

"Brilliant... memorable... a heady and powerful triumph... one of the most spectacularly vibrant and moving works by an American in years."--Alice Metcalf Miller, Cleveland Plain Dealer

It's 1949, the era of the mambo, and two young Cuban musicians make their way from Havana to New York. The Castillo brothers, workers by day, become, by night, stars of the dance halls, where their orchestra plays the sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is a golden time that thirty years later will be remembered with deep affection. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos has created an enthralling novel about passion and loss, memory and desire.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Hijuelos's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two young Cuban immigrants, who become stars of a New York dance hall in the 1950s where their lush, sensuous music earns them the title "Mambo Kings," returns in this paperback edition.

Oscar Hijuelos, the son of Cuban immigrants, was born in New York City in 1951. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His novels--Our House in the Last World, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, Mr. Ives' Christmas, Empress of the Splendid Season, and A Simple Habana Melody--have been translated into twenty-five languages.