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Writer Oscar Hijuelos passes away

Writer Oscar Hijuelos passes away

THE Cuban-American writer Oscar Hijuelos has passed away. He was 62.

Mr. Hijuelos won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the first Latino to do so, in 1990 for his second novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. The book, which  told the story of a pair of Cuban-born brothers who emigrate to New York in the 1950s and start an orchestra, was turned in a film in 1992 starring Antonio Banderas and Armand Assante.

Born to Cuban immigrant parents in New York in 1951, Mr. Hijuelos’s work mostly focused on the lives of immigrants as they strived for the American dream.

He published his first book, Our House in The Last World, in 1983 after studying creative writing. His other books included The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien and Mr. Ives’ Christmas. His memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes, was published in 2011 (see below).

Mr. Hijuelos passed away after suffering a heart attack while playing tennis in New York.

He is survived by his wife, Lori Marie Carlson.

To view an interview in which Oscar Hijuelos talked about his memoir Thoughts Without Cigarettes, click here.

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