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Fans of Oscar Hijuelos, author of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," are in luck. He is summering in Connecticut and has agreed to visit the Westport Library on Monday, July 26 to talk about his most recent book, "Beautiful María of My Soul." This novel stars the stunning woman who inspired and then rejected Nestor Castillo of "Mambo Kings." Now in her 60s and living in Miami with her pediatrician daughter, Maria tells the story of their unforgettable love affair.
A New York city-born second-generation Cuban-American, Hijueloss parents arrived in the U.S. from Cuba in the 1940s. He went to City College of New York, where novelist Donald Barthelme was one of his professors.
Hijuelos's themes often include assimilation, identity, love and loss, and the joys -- and complications -- of family life. The Los Angeles Times wrote about "Beautiful Maria of My Soul," "... the warm, exuberant triumph that Oscar Hijuelos has achieved in his much-anticipated new novel, 'Beautiful María of My Soul,' ... is a kind of pentimento on his hugely successful 1989 book, 'The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. '"
In 1985, Hijuelos was awarded the Rome Prize for his first novel, "In Our House in the Last World." "Mambo Kings," which won the Pulitzer, was his second novel. It was made into a film and musical. Hijuelos currently teaches at Duke University. His talk at the Westport Library is free. It begins at 7:30 p.m. His books will be available for purchase and signing. For more information, visit the Westport Library's website.
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