The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Hijuelos, Oscar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140299572 ISBN 13: 9780140299571

Publisher: Penguin, 2001

'This book is a hymn to music, to heterosexual love ... There is hedonism and pain, ecstasy and despair, devotion and lechery ... A fantastic novel' - Evening Standard 'An exuberant portrait of the Hispanic music scene and Cuban family culture in New York in the Forties and Fifties' - The Times

Review:

'Street-smart and lyrical, impassioned and reflective ! a rich and provocative book' The New York Times 'By turns street-smart and lyrical, impassioned and reflective, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a rich and provocative book--a moving portrait of a man, his family, a community and a time' - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 'The book is a hymn to music, to heterosexual love... There is a hedonism and pain, ecstasy and despair, devotion and lechery... A fantastic novel' Evening Standard

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.