Oscar Hijuelos

Born

in The United States

August 24, 1951

Died

October 12, 2013

Genre

Oscar Hijuelos (born August 24, 1951) is 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 ...more

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Oscar Hijuelos’s books

Average rating: 3.65 · 17,101 ratings · 1,350 reviews · 24 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love 3.68 avg rating — 11,519 ratings — published 1989 — 48 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mr. Ives' Christmas 3.76 avg rating — 1,055 ratings — published 1995 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dark Dude 3.64 avg rating — 688 ratings — published 2008 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Beautiful Maria of My Soul 3.32 avg rating — 666 ratings — published 2010 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise 3.52 avg rating — 606 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien 3.69 avg rating — 629 ratings — published 1993 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Empress of the Splendid Season 3.56 avg rating — 493 ratings — published 1999 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Simple Habana Melody 3.45 avg rating — 383 ratings — published 2002 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Our House in the Last World 3.63 avg rating — 420 ratings — published 1983 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Thoughts Without Cigarettes 3.38 avg rating — 189 ratings — published 2011 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Oscar Hijuelos…

Series by Oscar Hijuelos

Mambo Kings (2 books)
by

Oscar Hijuelos

3.66 avg rating — 12,185 ratings

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"In Bed" with Oscar Hijuelos

His Favorite Latino Literature: The Pulitzer winner pens his first memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes, and picks his favorite works by Latino...

Quotes by Oscar Hijuelos

“On his back, Robert must have had time to see something beautiful, and not just the ugliness of a city street at the end of life. Even with the tremendous pain in his badly gutted belly he would have looked up beyond the fire escapes and the windows with their glittery trees and television glows, to the sky about the rooftops. A sky shimmery with the possibilities of the death; lights exaggerated, the heavens peeled back- a swirling haze of nebulae and comets - in some distant place, intimations of the new beginning into which he would soon journey”
― Oscar Hijuelos, Mr. Ives' Christmas

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“Oh yes!...The sweet summons of God to man. That's when He calls you up to His arms. And it's the most beautiful thing, a rebirth, a new life. But, just the same I'm in no rush to find out.”
― Oscar Hijuelos, Mr. Ives' Christmas

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“The house in which the fourteen sisters of Emilio Montez O'brien lived, radiated femininity.”
― Oscar Hijuelos, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien

tags: first-sentence

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Polls

October 2019 New School Classic Poll

The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1915, 176 pages

81 votes, 26.5%

Pet Sematary by Stephen King, 1983, 576 pages

76 votes, 24.8%

Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima, 1968, 389 pages

47 votes, 15.4%

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, 1950, 359 pages

42 votes, 13.7%

The Golem by Gustav Meyrink, 1915, 264 pages

36 votes, 11.8%

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos, 1989, 407 pages

24 votes, 7.8%

306 total votes

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