The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love - Softcover

Hijuelos, Oscar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1401310028 ISBN 13: 9781401310028

Publisher: Hachette Books, 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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

"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

From the Back Cover:

It's 1949. It's the era of the mambo, and two young Cuban musicians make their way up from Havana to the grand stage of New York. The Castillo brothers, workers by day, become by night stars of the dance halls, where their orchestra plays the lush, sensuous, pulsing music that earns them the title of the Mambo Kings. This is their moment of youth -- a golden time that thirty years later will be remembered with nostalgia and deep affection. In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos has created a rich and enthralling novel about passion and loss, memory and desire.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1401310028
• ISBN 13: 9781401310028
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448